Comment on Why do people insist on not answering ALL the questions in an email or text message?
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
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.
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
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
If you put it in red, loads of people will read it in black. Dont use html.
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 go respond appropriately.
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 not for that.
someacnt@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Not OP, but I also have very hard time articulating what I mean while keeping it formal. How do I improve on this front?
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Bullet points. If you don’t have a rapport spell things out paragraph style and then finish the email off with something like this…