No Stupid Questions

The question they are answering is the first one they read.

(/s)

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.

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.

LOL, literally happened to me this morning, except my tormentor said "nope."

I'll harass him about it next week

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:

• short sentences
• bullet points
• if all else fails multiple emails with a single question because apparently I have all the time in the world.

I'm not sure. Maybe. Sometimes. I don't know.

I can only tell you that my best results have come from replying with a neutral "Thank you", then repeating the questions. I prefer it when they answer all my questions, but ultimately, if I want answers, I need to persist, and so I do.

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.

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?