Submitted 11 months ago by andrewta@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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?
If you’ve got questions, put them in bullet points.
I’m not scanning a wall of text to find everything.
For me it’s not intentional. I get fixated on one of the questions that require more mental energy than the others and then forget to answer the rest. I have no excuses. My bad.
AI bullshit
parse
That sounds like technical jargon…
I can confirm that it doesn’t work at all. My advice is to send one question per email, or one chat message per question. It’s better.
People are lazy and stupid, you can ask one question at a time or better yet setup a meeting to ask them verbally, you aren’t getting any answers otherwise
Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?
I can read
S-trier trolling right here.
Because people choose the easiest question to answer. You can’t change people, but you can change how you communicate.
Hi based on you current post,
Why do people insist on answering only one question?
**Do people just not read? ** I would say most people have a lot to read, especially emails, I get dozens of them daily, archive a few thousands yearly. So I will gloss over, see if it’s addressed to me, of not I will probably wait until it becomes my problem to react/reply
Are people thatLazy? No people are busy, is this the same question as the first, out a request for alternatives causes to not reading?
What is going on? This question is vague, I see no point in replying, except maybe an opportunity to troll, or belittle you in this email that had now accumulated 30 people over 7 departments, and possibly one or two customer that were involved a week ago when the thread was about something entirely different.
In short, be specific, and format your message for readability. ;
Name whoever you expect to reply.
Split your questions.
Make sure they’re actual questions you need definitive answers to.
Gonna be honest, always write my mails structured with listed out questions that try to be specific yet not overloaded with info (hard to do, but possible. Mostly) and yet…
I get two answers to my three questions, with one answer even on topic, and the other being astrology divination of polar bear’s butthole position over png of africa.
Yeah I get that too.
Should the report be sent by mail or e-mail?
So I will gloss over, see if it’s addressed to me, of not I will probably wait until it becomes my problem to react/reply
Tbh I would rather have someone do this not realizing I’m expecting a reply from them than to reply only to some of it, because when the latter happens it’s usually like pulling teeth to get a response to the rest.
Been doing email since it began. Same frustrations.
Solutions (workarounds):
Yep that’s fine push to production by Friday plz.
I started listing the questions as 1. 2. 3. And so on. Which helped a lot.
I hate when i di 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.
No.
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?
“Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?”
Not much, what is going on with you?
Even when we converse, we get across just one point at a time. You have to respect other people’s time and bandwidth (Okay, one or two points).
Yes because when are conversing in person you are conversing synchronously.
Only one person talks at a time and for the most part only one major subject idea question or problem is considered at a time. You talk about one thing and then you move along and talk about another thing.
This is not necessarily the case with written language. Where you have the benefit of talking about many things, changing subjects, and listing information out.
I’ve had my fair share of issues with not getting a complete response from e-mails. And so I changed the way I look at it. It’s not like it will take weeks to get all the information you need just because you didn’t get everything in one go.
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.
It’s not that they “insist” on not answering, they just have limited reading comprehension and/or attention span. In the business world you learn to ask exactly one question in an email, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get an answer.
It really is a sad State of affairs that reading comprehension is so bad that people can’t answer questions in written form.
I mean it’s literally written down you can’t miss it.
And to clarify this is more of me complaining because I’ve experienced this a lot. It’s most apparent in online discussions, where seemingly a majority of what you say gets completely skipped missed or misinterpreted and replies often focus on just a couple words of your statement instead of understanding sometimes even just a whole paragraph.
if we’re referring to people in the U.S. it’s important to remember that over half of the population can’t read beyond a 6th grade level.
It is a sad state but it’s like the weather, you can complain about it or dress for it.
Sometimes I’m busy man and trying to get something done
Poor reading comprehension skills are more prevalent than we think
The level of frustration from online discussions when the things you say are entirely missed or misinterpreted is a great example of this.
Even mildly complex topics that touch anything politically charged or emotionally charged tend to be subject to groupthink dynamics in a format where group think is largely just a result of poor reading comprehension.
54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). That’s for the US – Globally illiteracy levels skyrocket to 86%. source
On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.
Ignoring the slightly superfluous ‘average’, but… Wow. I’m surprised. I guess there’s a lot of people in far rural areas, or impoverished, or just surfing is their life (California has the lowest adult literacy!), who never learnt to read.
You can mitigate most of it by having extremely clear emails that are fast to read, with clearly numbered questions.
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.
I run into this when texting my mother.
She’ll ask the same thing from 2 different perspectives (probably a better word but I can’t think of it atm). Both are technically the same question, but I can’t just say “yes” it “no”, because it answers the question from just one or the other, but indicates the opposite from the other question’s pov. Or sometimes needing to know between 2 possibilities she asks about one and then follows it up asking about the other.
For example, if we’ve recently met up to see my baby niblings (not even sure if this is a common use word, but I mean my nieces/nephews, aka her grandchildren), she could ask “Could you send me the photos you got in a text?” And then she would follow up with something like “Or did you already send them to my email?”
Now, I can’t say “yes” or “no”, I have to spell out what I did.
Other times it will be a question that she knows I picked one of the 2 options, but instead of just "did you do option A? Which would allow a quick answer “yes” which conveys that I did A, or I could say “no”, which would indicate I did option B. One word, clear defined message. But she’ll (sometimes during the process of replying- oof that’s frustrating), she’ll add “or did you do option B?” meaning I now have to spell out what I did.
I like efficient communication, and hate wasting a lot of words. And I’m any other circumstance, a 1 word answer works so well to convey the entire thing. But she almost always throws in a wrench by adding another question that conflicts with the ability to do that.
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?
Ah, one of my top complaints about digital communication. Doesn’t matter if it’s SMS or email, someone plainly doesn’t read the entirety of what you wrote even if it’s relatively short. Irritatingly sometimes taking another two follow-ups regarding the exact same subject or question ending up with both parties likely getting frustrated.
Digital communication is near instant. It’s not like snail mail where you have to cram your letter with as much information as you can, or it will be ages until the next reply.
Not sure what your point is. Just send a ton of messages when one will (should) do? If the information is pertinent or pressing then it’s not useful to have to send multiple messages.
I’ve gotten passive agressive / aggressive about this depending on the person.
Now if I ask more than one question and they only answer one, I’ll just forward them the same email again with the first question struck through.
As per my last email…here’s the same email again.
Use numbering, paragraphs etc.
Its their responsibility to read shit but its yours to be clear and concise.
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”.
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.
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.
I make a point to ask one question.
First I ask it as the first line.
Then I elaborate on the question, what I mean, and why I’m asking in the body of the email.
Then the last a paragraph is restating the question in a different wording.
If you want to communicate clearly, then put effort into avoiding all ambiguity. If you have many questions, write many emails.
ADHD
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.
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.
This is an absolutely insane take. The documentation that emails provide cover everyone’s ass.
Some people dont use phones for security reasons, and its also good to have things in writing.
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?”
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!?
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.
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 (-: )
Witchfire@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I usually number my questions, makes it more obvious