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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 was taught in college to only include a single question in one email unless you can't get around it, because many people will only see the first one.
A lot of it is laziness but on the other hand my boss will often cc me on irrelevant emails, rather infamously sometimes forward an entire 20 responses email chain and tell you to read it, and send 8 paragraphs of questions with only one related to me. Frankly, it is overwhelming and a waste of time. I've started not responding and my productivity and mental health have improved.
Emails and texts need to be succinct. The higher up the chain you go the more true this is. The higher up the chain the more emails you get think 200+. If someone writes a paragraph you're skimming for relevance generally.
Tldr; professional communication does not need length. Justify your questions separately from actual bulleted or numbered questions.
Use bullet points as it helps. A lot of people suck at reading and a lot aren't great at writing. Some peoples' styles are also just not very compatible.
I had a trouble with this a lot when I was younger and got told:
LOL, literally happened to me this morning, except my tormentor said "nope."
I'll harass him about it next week
People hate to read. I write emails that try to cover all bases, because I can't assume grown adults with advanced degrees know what's going on. Sadly, they'll not only not read it, but ask me to write less. Cutting the word count only leads to more confusion.
I'm so done with humanity sometimes.
They don't want to. Lazy, careless? Who knows. They zero in on one thing, type the one word answer and hit send.
Like others say, I bullet point multiple questions (usually with just a - , I'm not using a word processor to write emails) and if they don't answer some I'll quote the whole bullet list including whatever they answered and paste it back.
I'm a little blunt though and it puts some people off.
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?
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.
Just say "Yes" and let her figure out what you meant.
Lmao I wish. I still usually try it, sometimes the timing can imply what I mean. But she always asks.
Probably has to do with her liking using extra words. I say the following without a trace of exaggeration.
If she's in a room with any person she's familiar with, she seems to have a complete inability to stop talking, other than if the other person is replying.
There can't be silence at all. Lately she's slowed down a little because she's gotten hooked on her Facebook feed, so she gets distracted. But even this just slows it down. She really just likes talking and hearing voices.
Whereas I only really engage in topics of interest or points of contention. She will literally try to repeat past conversations ad nauseum if she runs out of ideas.
I really can't tell if she likes talking or being talked to more. But given that growing up, none of us (her children) share this trait, she usually is the one to fill the gaps. I feel like she thinks her mouth and ears are the bus in the movie Speed. If the words being spoken per minute drops below some imaginary quantity, she'll explode.
So, answering with a should-be-sufficient-but-is-now-vague answer, she'll use that as a launching point to another subject too.
It's rough in the streets lol