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?
Edit at this point I’ve got the answers . Some are too lazy to actually read. Some admit they get focused on one item and forget to go back. I understand the second group. The first group yeah no excuse there.
Continuing edit: there are comments where people have tried the bullet points and they say it still doesn’t help. I might put the needed questions in red.
Yes.
Take your upvote and choke on it, prick.
/s
I didn’t expect !inclusiveor@lemmy.blahaj.zone followed by !angryupvote@sh.itjust.works
Bet you didn’t expect this either
No one expects it… But what a show! Damn, the song will be stuck in my head for days now
🎶Sit on my face and tell me that you love me🎶
Considering your wording in the last paragraph, I’m going to guess that your writing style is frequently overwhelming. Making sure that questions are clearly isolated (I’d suggest using numeric lists or bullet points) makes it clear what response you’re expecting.
Additionally, if you’re asking several difficult questions, it’s likely that people will lose the thread partway through.
This. It’s pretty common in my industry for people to either copy and paste your bullets into their reply and put their responses directly after each or edit your original email in the chain with the answers in red below the bullets.
I work in text.
You can keep your infix replies and fancy colors. I want my replies to look like forwarded email as per rfc1855.
We need a bot for that.
Same. At my work and everywhere I’ve worked, almost everyone responds like that to emails with multiple questions in them. It’s either OP’s workplace is an outlier or his formatting isn’t conducive enough for people to respond appropriately.
If you put it in red, loads of people will read it in black. Dont use html.
This is what I was thinking too. Failure to exercise brevity is the leading cause of people not having the time for your email.
Failure to exercise brevity
That’s a wonderful wording!
Yeah that’s gonna become part of my vernacular.
Not OP, but I experience difficulty articulating what I mean while staying formal. How to improve?
Bullet points. If you don’t have a rapport spell things out paragraph style and then finish the email off with something like this…
So considering the above I’d like to get your opinion on these points:
-
Do you think the widget should be blue or orange?
-
Given the expected market impact do we want to bring in PR for our e-widget announcement?
-
I’m sorry but there is no difference between putting them in bullet points, or typing like I did. People need to learn to read.
Side note :
I’ve tried bullet points.
I’ve tried putting multiple return carriages between each question.
I’ve putting all the questions end on end
and it makes no difference end result is the same.
Add in a lot of the other comments saying they have the same problem it isn’t just me
Your own report suggests there is a difference. People aren’t answering your questions. You do not have their attention apparently.
The burden is on you to get your questions answered. Other people have other concerns. Like it or not, you have to do the work of getting these answers. You may need to have a conversation instead of a list of demands.
Perhaps try an email thread instead of a single monolithic email?
Open the thread with a single key question. Listen to their reply. Does your next question still pertain? Then ask it in your reply.
People are not vending machines that contain answers you must shake out of them. A proper relationship, even if just email, is still the best way to achieve your goals.
My two cents as a person who experienced such frustrations early in my career.
People need to learn to read.
But it seems you’re the one having the issue. Rather than hoping people will learn to read better it might be a better option to write in a way that caters to those bad readers.
Try being more direct, you can still write out your whole email with the full description, but put in a section somewhere that’s easy to see that’s labeled as “QUESTIONS” and then enumerate the questions you want answered. I often will have the whole section bold and further highlight important words in red. This makes it easier for people to answer inline on the reply and helps ensure questions weren’t missed.
The truth is, most people don’t like the ‘email’ part of the job and may only check it once or twice a day and I’d most likely just skimming through several messages and not fully devoting much time to each message. By making it easier for them to reply you end up with a better result.
You can also use this when you expect someone to take action from your email. Let them know precisely what you want them to do, and make it very easy to find ‘The Ask’.
EDIT: Or, you can just downvote any comments that actually offer suggestions and stay of the opinion that everyone else is wrong and only you are correct.
Considering your wording in the last paragraph
I’m really confused by people’s reaction to OP here. I agree that I personally don’t share OP’s experiences, but what’s wrong with that last paragraph? It’s not overwhelming at all, so how does it indicate that their writing style is overwhelming? (I know MINE is, no need to point that out)
If people have trouble understanding it, then reading comprehension must really be at rock bottom.
I agree that formatting is important with l proper text length, but this is literally two lines, this isn’t in need of bullet points.
OP’s last paragraph contains three question marks and essentially one question - the first is their actual question with the following two being escalating statements. If you threw this into a work email with five other questions some people’s brains would seize up and just refuse to answer more than one question because they’re not certain if there are six or eight genuine questions.
In life and especially a professional setting we’re interacting with people in the top 1% of communication skills… and the bottom 25%.
If people have trouble understanding it, then reading comprehension must really be at rock bottom.
If 90% of people have bad reading comprehension then it doesn’t do much for anyone to point that out and stick to the way you are writing instead of making it understandable to everyone.
You can get mad at everyone else or you can start playing to the lowest common denominator.
-
Question 1
-
Question 2
-
Question 3
I’ll do this and they STILL only answer the first question
“Thank you for your answer to my first question. Could you please also address questions 2 and 3?”
At least by numbering the questions you make it easier to re-ask them.
Send separate emails. Schedule them 15 minutes apart.
No. This is not the way and will get you even less answers.
This gets you “oh, I never got that email. It probably got blocked by the spam filter.”
Yep exactly. It pisses people off.
This is so extra when motherfuckers could just read.
Reply:
One down, two to go!
Agreed, especially if you’re writing to someone who’s not completely fluent in the language. Also use short sentences and common vocabulary.
This.
And if they don’t answer all three, the only response they get is a repeat of the missing question.
After a day.
this is the way. if you really want the highest chance of all questions being answered, number them.
Tried that. Got the same result
Try again.
jokes on you, they still wont respond them, or even mark which one they responded to. you have to send 3 different messages even if emails
-
Been doing email since it began. Same frustrations.
Solutions (workarounds):
- Email is structured with “executive summary” & “detail”. That way I can write all the words I want but people can only read the first paragraph.
- Never ask questions. Tell them what I’m going to choose, & give them opportunity to disagree. That way if they don’t respond usefully I can take their “non-response” as a response & proceed anyway.
- If I need to ask a question, use a phone call or go to their desk, or (shudder) make a meeting.
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
No.
How are the questions formatted?
This. Use bullets or bold each question so the number of questions is clear before each question is fully read.
In a workplace environment, I shouldn’t have to format emails as if they’re to be read by a 12 year old.
Welcome to the workforce! (I’m assuming you’re new…)
No, just very stubborn
It’s not simply a reading comprehension thing with bullet points. If your questions require research on my end having them already structured in bullets does a few things to help with that process.
The asker’s bullet structure gives something to mimic. You can even put your answers directly below the question, so the asker can be reminded of their own questions.
The bullets also help skimming, if I need to see which item id is needed next it’s easier to do so without losing my place.
Bullet grammar structure also allows for much terser sentences. If I need to reread your question it’s easier if I don’t have to ignore a bunch of words that don’t substantively alter the meaning.
Do I need any of these? No. Could I put the questions into bullets myself for the reply? Sure. But it’s easier to spend more time and effort on answering your questions if you save me a few steps.
Sure, depending on the issue. But the main issue is that some people actually DO need those, and for those people, it’s absolutely a reading comprehension thing (which could have roots in being overworked, not caring, low attention span, poor schooling, any number of things, but the end result is poor reading comprehension).
I should not have to read emails as if they’re written by 12 years old either.
Agreed, and also a non sequitur?
Not non sequitur - Chiasmus
Yeah I had to look them up.
If you don’t care enough about the topic to take a few seconds to proofread and format your questions why would I care to decipher them? 12 year olds learn that taking the time to write a first and second draft will improve the final product.
Definitely some acceptable variation between informal chats and emails being sent to whole teams so know your audience.
Who said anything about not proofreading? My emails are perfectly legible and written in proper English. You’re equating “lack of dumbed-down easy to digest bullet points” with “sloppy, error-filled writing”. They’re two extremely different things.
Yes
Yesn’t
My colleagues complain of the same things, saying they’ve tried everything. But I never have that issue.
Here’s an example of what they might send: Hello Bob, we have just recieved all your documents, so thank you. But upon review, we have found that we are still missing x,y,z. In order to expedite the process we ask for your cooperation.
- At your earliest convenience, can you please send not more than twelve months of documents x and how they pertain to y?
- Can you clarify why z contains a substantial difference from the previous times it occurred in September 2020, October 2020? Don’t hesitate to contact us with any further questions!
Here’s what I would say instead: Hi Bob, to finish the file we require:
- A max 12 months of documents x (showing y)
- Why is z now so different from 2020 Sept, Oct? Thanks in advance.
I know of 5 people I work with who will moat likely send you 10 months of documents x (showing y) as a response to your example, 12 if you are lucky.
No, they will not even acknowledge #2. They would have the same reaponse to your first, wordier version because they are just doing the first request and barely noticed you had a two digit number.
That’s the point where you start with the “Thank you! In case you missed it…”
Almost never fails to get an apology and a smug feeling of superiority. God, I hate those people. Luckily I don’t have to work with those brainless corpo drones too much.
This is the correct answer. If people aren’t answering all your questions, your not formatting your questions properly.
I do a mix of both.
Start short and get to the point.
Add any extra crap below it.
Hey Bob we need X/Y/Z to finish the thing. Can you send it ASAP so we can continue.
Additional details:
- X is needed because of blah blah blah. Confirming the measurement and parts needed.
- Y is needed for compliance reporting in sister department in case of an audit.
- Z is requested by the project manager to justify additional man hours and assign more staff so we can meet the deadline.
Because people choose the easiest question to answer. You can’t change people, but you can change how you communicate.
Reading comprehension has gone down the tubes. I dunno if it’s from people watching too many TikToks and their attention span can’t handle reading more than one sentence anymore, or what, but I have definitely noticed a change in people’s ability to read and understand the content of what they just read.
Where I work, my old boss never wrote anything down, did not like to communicate via email, and insisted on phone calls/verbal meetings instead. When they announced they were taking a new job, we begged them to create an SOP of all the things they did with detailed instructions because NONE of it had ever been written down. We were told no, they couldn’t do that. No explanation other than “I can’t.” And I’m convinced that they simply couldn’t read, or could BARELY read.
So I created the SOP instead, detailed as hell, everything in one place. Sections, subsections, hyperlinks, it’s all there. 2 new employees come into the office, I’m supposed to train them. I do, and I show them the SOP, tell them “everything you need to know is in this SOP”, so that AFTER I train them, they can reference it.
They never reference it, ever. They ask me how to do the things they’ve forgotten instead. I just point them to the correct section in the SOP and tell them to read it. BUT THEY DON’T READ. It’s insane! How do they get by in life in general!?
Literacy rates in USA are pretty awful and getting worse. And probably happening in other countries as well.
It’s especially bad when you work in an experienced field where a primary job function is reading comprehension (software engineering). And you have folks who are supposed to be software engineers who can’t seem to read or understand documentation. Never mind being able to productively engage in the various forms of debate that come along with any engineering practice.
You’re right. The illiteracy is everywhere. It’s a very troubling sign.
I wonder, were there any other points in history, post-literacy, where a significant amount of people went to school yet still lacked literacy skills? If it has happened, would it even be recorded? Or is this aspect of modern society truly novel?
It’d be nice to know how such a situation would’ve been rectified in the past, but I get the feeling the solution would be the same thing I’ve been calling for since my own childhood - a comprehensive public educational system with a focus on critical thinking.
It would be interesting to see if it’s ever happened in the past, for sure. I too assumed it was due to poor education, but the three people I mentioned (my old boss and the 2 new coworkers) all came from different areas of the U.S. and are each in different generations (1 Boomer, 1 Gen X, 1 Millennial), so they all have very different backgrounds/education experiences, yet they ALL struggle to read anything longer than a single sentence. It’s infuriating. I try to be patient, because hey, we all have our thing we suck at, but it’s honestly a little scary that they and so many other are out there not following directions simply because they can’t read them.
In the US it’s probably because literacy and reading comprehension is the lowest it’s been since the 80s.
“Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?”
Not much, what is going on with you?
Human communication isn’t perfect. Some people have too many emails. Others need cues only audio visual interaction can provide to quickly parse info.
Use numbering, paragraphs etc.
Its their responsibility to read shit but its yours to be clear and concise.
Big shout out for enumerating questions. Makes it clear you need an answer for each one. Makes it easier to follow up if you need more info on a particular question. Makes it easier to pester the person with “hey, I need an answer to 2 by EOD or project deadlines will be significantly impacted” (copied to your PM).
People’s poor reading comprehension is annoying. But the right move is to do everything you can to get the answers you need, creating a polite paper trail as you go. Usually the other person will get you the info you need sooner if you pester them enough, with the implied threat that you are building a case against them if the project is delayed. Because if they don’t answer your questions in a timely fashion when you do everything possible to get the answers you need, it is their fault.
On average a communication has more readers than writers, so it is better for writer(s) to use effort in order to save effort on the behalf of the reader(s).
This was especially true in the days of mailing lists and me having to beat TOFU users about the head with a clue-by-4. But, it remains true today. The median communication might be 1 to 1, but it’s much more frequent for additional readers to be added that additional writers, so maximum effort with writing is still true.
But, man, it is annoys the heck out of me when I compose informative, contexual email/SMS with several open-ended questions and get back: “yes”.
I started listing the questions as 1. 2. 3. And so on. Which helped a lot.
I hate when i do that and they still refuse to answer more than one
At least now you can rely back with “can you also provide feedback for #1 & #3?”
Repeat until all items are cleared. Not perfect, but at least you don’t have to waste time rewording a follow-up email.
