Submitted 3 days ago by andrewta@lemmy.world to [deleted]
For example I’ll send an e-mail with 3 questions and will only get an answer to one of the questions. It’s worse when there are 2 yes/no questions with a question that is obviously not a yes/no question. Then I get a response of
Yes
back in the e-mail. So which question are they answering?
Mainly I’m asking all of you why do people insist on only answering 1 question out of an e-mail where there are multiple? Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?
It annoys the heck out of me too. Generally what I do is reply with the remaining questions they haven’t answered; sometimes they get the message and answer all of them, sometimes we go round and round until I have all the answers I need.
I work in IT so for the most part, if I have 5 questions, that’s because there are 5 things I need to know. And I need to know because they want me to solve their problem, so if they want to do this one question at a time that’s fine, but if I start out going one at a time I get complained at for being too slow.
I’ve also tried everything I can think of short of being explicitly rude in my messages. Numbering them doesn’t work. Bullet-points don’t work. One question per paragraph doesn’t work. Asking them explicitly to answer all questions doesn’t work (how did these people ever pass an exam?).
(And yes I’m aware I haven’t answered all your questions (-: )
Bad reading comprehension
My rule is more than 2 questions and it’s a phone call.
If it’s more than 2 questions, I want it all in writing
That’s why you have the phone call, to discuss it, and in closing state you’ll send an email.
If it’s more than 1.1 questions, I want it all in writing
It’s a mixture of stupidity and laziness.
In the US it’s probably because literacy and reading comprehension is the lowest it’s been since the 80s.
The human brain processes information by chunking - bundling up information into chunks to remember it. It’s like a .zip file or compression on an image. That process is a bit lossy. If you’ve ever tried to write a technical document or a rules-set for a game, and had a user go through the document undirected, you’ll see it in action.
The more complicated, technical, or tedious the instructions are, the more likely loss or misinterpretation will occur. A friend of mine says that writing a technical document is like programming a computer that skips every 7th line.
As a person who has written many of these, I’ve found ways to counteract / ameliorate their problems:
I hope this helps!
Hopefully you use astricks to bold because if you’re using HTML then lots of people won’t see all of those text decorations
I’ve also found it helps to, if you have just a few questions that aren’t really related, break them into separate messages. And space them out a bit, if you’ve got time.
I recently emailed my professor about a question on a take home test. I asked for clarification because the wording was weird. I also asked how I should format the answer, and where in the textbook I can find info relating to it. His email back to me just said “the answer is on page 75”. It was not.
That’s what you get for not buying the very latest edition of the textbook. /s
Seriously though, you’re clearly trying to actually comprehend the material, but even the professor was too checked out? I wish I were surprised, but that’s just upsetting. Nobody takes responsibility for education anymore, not the instructors, not the administration, and none but maybe a handful of students who get zero support from either of the above. I’ve learned more from reading on the internet for free than I have from any classroom. But learning for free on one’s own doesn’t give them a fancy paper that attracts employers. Gotta spend money to make money, yet again.
I have the same question, as I will receive replies through text messages that are like this:
Me: hey! Are we still meeting today? Where would be good for you? I’m open from 10am until 6pm so just let me know when works best.
Them: I can still meet today
I get responses like this all the time, and I don’t feel like my initial text is too much.
This is a perfect example.
For me it’s
*Is my firewall set correctly (with how the firewall is set )
And
*I will hold off on installing the new program until I hear if the firewall is correct
The answer I get back?
*Did you install the new program?
Are you serious?
As per my previous email
Yes they are that lazy. The average office worker also has the attention span of a gnat.
In email, I always make my questions the last thing right before my signature.
If you write open ended or ambiguous questions you risk your audience having to take time to think about a response and they get distracted. Risky questions in this area are: “So what do you want to do here?” or “What do you think?”
Sounds like your emails are too long. Trim it to the minimum amount of words to get your point across and be professional, and put all questions in a numbered list.
You are wrong. People do not insist. People are free to do.
For example, if I know the answer to question #2 then I can give this answer and why shouldn’t I?
And I feel free to remain silent where I don’t know things, or to forget that there have been more questions, or I don’t have the time, or whatever…
As others have suggested, in order to communicate effectively, you have to tailor your message to your audience. Dumb it down, break it down, shorten it, order questions from most to least important or most to least relevant to the recipient, or just badger them relentlessly with follow ups until you have the information you need and talk shit about them behind their back to any competent coworkers you have.
Regardless, they’re not going to just magically change, so it’s up to you to do something different if you want a different result than you’re getting now.
There’s a whole academic study and degree for technical documentation. I wish more people knew how to write things.
The problem is partially you. You want to write an email that can be skimmed by someone who only reads 10% of it and they’ll quickly be able to understand you and reply to you
The person on the other end is probably an overworked wage slave. You can’t expect them to read every email cover to cover.
Yeah i get about 100 emails a day and tht ais already a confusing mess. I spend more time on a reply checking and looking up a name to add, because we have lots and lots of thrid party contractors. I domt have time to also mind read the sender
“Can you get todays reference number”
Do they really want to say “yes i can receive emails with reference numbers in them” or are they asking if i have already received it.
If you’ve got questions, put them in bullet points.
I’m not scanning a wall of text to find everything.
I don’t need to answer all questions that every human shoves at me.
If you want me to help you you sure as fuck do. Otherwise figure it out on your own
Aight
Ah, to be 6 years old again.
Didn’t know all my old coworkers were on Lemmy lol
Mainly I’m asking all of you why do people insist on only answering 1 question out of an e-mail where there are multiple?
They are either distracted or don’t understand that there are multiple questions. In a few cases they don’t want or know how to respond to multiple questions in an email format because they are afraid of changing your text formatting (yes, at least three people have told me that was why they didn’t).
Do people just not read?
Quite a few have terrible reading comprehension.
Are people that lazy?
Some are.
What is going on?
It is a mix of a lot of things, all of which are different versions of poor communication skills.
Learn to ask better questions. Understand that you may only get one answer and ask the best most important question in a clear and concise way.
May I ask, regarding your typing are your questions buried in text?
If the questions are buried in text similar to your last paragraph, your not getting all those questions answered.
As far as I can tell their last paragraph is three clear and distinct questions.
Did all the questions get answered in this post?
If you ask 10 questions and I know the answer to two of them, I’m going to answer the two and respond expecting someone else to answer the other questions.
If they are all directed at me and I’m the only person in the TO, then I’ll answer what I can. The times I don’t answer is because I either don’t have an answer or don’t want to answer it right now.
Instead of immediately blaming the other person, reflect upon your words. If someone sent you the same message with different but similar questions, how would you respond? Were the questions clear and concise with reasonable answers or do they need discussion? If yes/no is asked, is the question really a yes or no question?
Remember, as busy as you are, the other person may be busier or dealing with emergencies and they are at least attempting to respond rather than just no response at all.
Do you acknowledge the questions you haven’t answered and state that you’ll respond to them at a later time or want another person to chime in?
I tend to answer them all, but I’m weird that way
I read an email more than once to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Not sure if the majority of people I exchange emails with has ever done more than skim an email.
The only ones who correctly respond to emails longer than a single sentence in their entirety are the legal folks.
As a neurodivergent engineer, I will either respond to half of your email, or 115% of it
People can’t be bothered to read or do shit because their comprehension is trash. This happens constantly. I taught college courses for years and it was pulling fucking teeth to get people to answer essay prompts. For example:
In One Hundred Years of Solitude we see generational cycles of behavior blah blah blah, which characters fit this pattern, which characters do not, and why?
95% of answers: only characters that fit the pattern. They read the first few words and ignored everything else, and then have the audacity to complain that I said they only answered half the question.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude we see generational cycles of behavior blah blah blah, which characters fit this pattern, which characters do not, and why?
Proceeds to write an essay about Goku.
Put the questions in bullet points so they’re easily visible. If it’s part of a paragraph, it’s getting lost.
Yep that’s fine push to production by Friday plz.
I’ve been reading the responses and it reminded me of the class I took called Business Communications, where they emphasized that CYA style communication was absolute nonsense, your responsibility when communicating is to convey information in a way that can be received, and if that doesn’t happen it’s your fault, not the recipient’s, you can’t control them only you.
So if this is just one person who misses all the questions, sure, it’s them, but you still need to figure out how to get your answers. If it’s everyone, it’s you. Maybe these questions aren’t amenable to email, maybe it’s your format, if you want answers (and not just to prove you asked in some sort of gotcha game) you need to ask the people who aren’t answering why they aren’t.
Everywhere I’ve worked, people answer these by choosing a different font color and writing answers back in the email, but there are not a lot of questions by email. Maybe a note to “provide answers in BLUE” with the word blue in blue font would help?
Why are you sending an email with multiple questions? If you have more than one question, it merits a phone call. Nobody has the time to answer all of your questions via email all day every day.
I personally receive over 200 business emails a day. Can you imagine what it would be like to answer multiple questions from each one?
If you have more than 1 question, call. Don’t wanna call? Then it’s not that important.
Maybe that works for internal and business communications, but if it is communication externally with clients there are a lot of people that just don’t answer their phone. Sometimes it is important stuff, and sometimes there are followup questions.
“XYZ is no longer available. Would you like ABC instead?
How many of ABC would you like?”
This is an absolutely insane take. The documentation that emails provide cover everyone’s ass.
You answer multiple questions from 200 phone calls every day?
Why would you even waste your time to reply if you’re not going to read what you’re replying to?
So when I’m writing to tech support (and they DO NOT offer phone support) exactly how do you suggest i call them?
I put in the two or three questions to save time. They can learn to read or get out of the business. There is a reason I put the questions in one email so they can read all three and get the answers back to each of the questions. If the three questions are related to each other show me the problem. This is especially important if the three questions are either related to each other, or contingent on each other.
Some people dont use phones for security reasons, and its also good to have things in writing.
The question they are answering is the first one they read.
(/s)
I haven’t done it very often, but the few times I haven’t answered all off the questions in an email has been because some of the questions are a waste of time. I had an engineer recently ask me if I could move the location of where I was running a pipe through a floor grating. Changing the location would have changed nothing, made my job more difficult, and would have been a tripping hazard. All off this could have been avoided if they had gotten or from behind their desk and just gone and looked at what I was working on in person. I ignored their question and sent more pictures of the area. They finally said that I was good to proceed with my original plan.
“can’t change it, I can show you why in person if you come over real quick”
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
You can mitigate most of it by having extremely clear emails that are fast to read, with clearly numbered questions.
TheSambassador@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Eh, still about 50-50 with these people. I’ve sent an email with 4 nicely formatted and numbered questions and had them respond only to question 3. Like… You read some of it, decided to answer one, and then give up with no other acknowledgement? Shit is wild.