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.
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.
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 to respond appropriately.
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.
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.
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.
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?
-
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.
Yes.
Take your upvote and choke on it, prick.
/s
I didn’t expect [email protected] followed by [email protected]
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🎶
People are lazy, they get so many emails each day, they couldn’t be bothered reading messages properly. I have turned into a cynical annoying person and write emails with large clear action points like this:
Hi, I have some comments and questions.
Please answer 2 (two) questions so that I can proceed with my part of this work. Without an answer to both, no more work will be done and the project will be on hold.
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1. Yes or no- Does this mean that the flibbertygibbet must be completed first?
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2. You need to provide further information on the doohickey because there is not enough detail for me to be able to goober the whatchamacallit
And then keep forwarding the original email every day until I get the required information. When the boss asks why no progress has been made, I can show him the email trail asking for information.
Cover your ass, keep asking the same questions until you get an answer.
-
No, we can test groksponk without flibbertygibbet. But, when rolling to production, flubbertygibbet will need to be in place before grokspunk due to how the gonksponk end-user documentation is written (at least, for now).
-
Oh, sorry, “doohicky” is how me and my team call them. They are actually <link to ISO specification for purchase>, specifically chapter 4, section 2 (in my 2012 copy it is titled “Hippydip Operations and Serialization”). Hopefully that connects well with the existing goober documentation, but let me know if you need further details/clarification.
-
TBH this is a bit wordy
“Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?”
Not much, what is going on with you?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
This is the correct answer. If people aren’t answering all your questions, your not formatting your questions properly.
It’s a mixture of stupidity and laziness.
Because people choose the easiest question to answer. You can’t change people, but you can change how you communicate.
The person that inspired this message will never change. You have to treat them as if you were a lawyer, and they are a hostile witness. Ask them one question, then follow up with another, until you have your answers. Problem is, they will probably catch on pretty quick and leave you unanswered.
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.
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.
For me? Usually it’s because answering the first question on the list took a lot of time, research, or mental energy and I had forgotten there were other questions by the time I finally had the answer written down. Sense of accomplishment, hit send.
People read the subject line, assuming it’s not longer than about seven words, and then the first 30%, and last 15% of your email, in my experience. You can increase this by adding line breaks and bullets. In my experience, the best responses come from a short paragraph, followed by a couple bullet points, then a couple sentences, then your salutation/signature. I try not to write anything longer than that.
This. OP is mistaken if he thinks all people had to carefully read all email. We techies love to explain things too much, but executives are administrators, they don’t delve into technical details unless needed.
My technique to get busy executives to answer my emails is being direct and brief.
- Subject: As concise as possible, and then more
- In bold, one thing I need from them. Asking three things is a sure way to end up with two unanswered things.
- Two line breaks
- In bold “Details”, another line break, and a bullet list of any info they might need, but not necessarily read.
That’s it. If they need more, they will ask you. If you need more, send three emails, or make it very clear in the first line that you’re asking three things, and make them a bullet list.
Also, this works surprisingly well with people other than executives.
That’s right. The brains of these super-efficient high performers and most valuable members of our society are so above everyone else, that they need babysitting and special care taken of their needs. It’s why they also deserve to get paid so much more than everyone else and not have any actual responsibility for their genius decisions!
Every day I feel so bad for these leaders and am inspired by the self-sacrifice they bring to make the world a better place.
Dude, tell me you haven’t been in a management position without yadda yadda etc.
They’re not genius or more valuable, their workflow is different. In development I could solve the same problem for days, and know the ins and outs of it; as a manager. When I pivoted to management, I understood I have people who know their shit, so I don’t have to worry about the details while I make sure they have everything they need to accomplish our compromises.
I had to learn to let go of the tech work so I could be more effective as a manager. I’d love to talk about Postgres optimization during dinner, but I can’t devote much time to that during the work day. That’s someone else’s job. I’ll just give them the resources.
Yep. Basically you need to respect their time, and not ask them to duplicate the work you’ve already done. This is especially important for executives, but works well on anyone… if you really need someone to do a thing or answer a question, make it easy for them to focus on completing your ask.
Address the email to one person who you need action from.
Tell them succinctly:
Why is this important?
What do you need from them right now?
After that, preemptively provide the answers to any followup questions they might ask - give them further context so they don’t have to dig for it. Don’t ask them to read a whole email string below if you can summarize it.
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 (-: )
