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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 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
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 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 (-: )
The human brain processes information by chunking - bundling up information into chunks to remember it. It's like a .zip file or compression on an image. That process is a bit lossy. If you've ever tried to write a technical document or a rules-set for a game, and had a user go through the document undirected, you'll see it in action.
The more complicated, technical, or tedious the instructions are, the more likely loss or misinterpretation will occur. A friend of mine says that writing a technical document is like programming a computer that skips every 7th line.
As a person who has written many of these, I've found ways to counteract / ameliorate their problems:
I hope this helps!
Hopefully you use astricks to bold because if you're using HTML then lots of people won't see all of those text decorations
I've also found it helps to, if you have just a few questions that aren't really related, break them into separate messages. And space them out a bit, if you've got time.
I KNOW THIS ONE AND THE ANSWER IS : IT"S MICROSOFT'S FAULT.
Back in the day when Email first became popular, it was normal and accepted use to do "in-line-quoting". You would hit "reply" and get the text of the original mail with a quote character, mostly ">" in the begining of the line. Then you would put some empty lines at the point where you wanted to answer/comment and type your reply in the middle of the email you received, easily giving context to your words, and making it obvious to what this comment relates, while also showing which part was by the sender and which by you (due to the quotation symbols)
This was a very good system, and then came MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
and they defaulted to giving you a empty page when clicking reply and just dumping the whole mail you replied to somewhere below, out of sight.
everyone using Outlook started "top-posting" to the annoyance of every intelligent being in the galaxy, but because Outlook was the first email experience many people had, the culture of in-line-quoting was destroyed by the unwashed microsoft masses.
fast-forward to today, where a young person (that is below 50) posts about a topic just to vent, and a old person (over 9000) replies with a sincere history lessen from a time where even email were better.
yours truely,
someone who is still salty about that and just decided to make a youtube rant about it.
I dont use ms products, but I can't believe that's the default. Very rarely does someone reply to me without the message quoted. And most still quote lines manually with >
Honestly, what I would like and I've never seen is a 2-pane reply window; left side is the reply, blank, and the right side is the previous emal. Both panes are scrollable, and if you highlight something on the right side, there's a <--- button in between that lets you shoot that text to the reply pane as a quote then continue composing as usual.
That might be nice for replies on social media like this, too.
You can't just say you made a youtube rant about it without posting a link.
They probably didn't link it by default because of Rule 4. However, I think there should be an exception when other users ask for links. (Maybe the rule should be, "No unsolicited self promotion"?)
For the record, I would also like to see this rant.
That rule exists because reddit wanted you to pay them ads. It doesn't make sense in Lemmy.
Bad reading comprehension
I recently emailed my professor about a question on a take home test. I asked for clarification because the wording was weird. I also asked how I should format the answer, and where in the textbook I can find info relating to it. His email back to me just said "the answer is on page 75". It was not.
That's what you get for not buying the very latest edition of the textbook. /s
Seriously though, you're clearly trying to actually comprehend the material, but even the professor was too checked out? I wish I were surprised, but that's just upsetting. Nobody takes responsibility for education anymore, not the instructors, not the administration, and none but maybe a handful of students who get zero support from either of the above. I've learned more from reading on the internet for free than I have from any classroom. But learning for free on one's own doesn't give someone a fancy paper that attracts employers. Gotta spend money to make money, yet again.
I don't need to answer all questions that every human shoves at me. Seems like a polarizing take from the comments. I receive questions to my department that are intended for eight other departments to answer. I don't portray myself as the encyclopedia for anyone who has my email inbox.
If you want me to help you you sure as fuck do. Otherwise figure it out on your own.
Email 1 - 32 words, 3 questions
Email reply - 1 word, zero context, zero answers
Email 2 - *I don't reply back, youre on your own.
Aight
Ah, to be 6 years old again.
I have the same question, as I will receive replies through text messages that are like this:
Me: hey! Are we still meeting today? Where would be good for you? I'm open from 10am until 6pm so just let me know when works best.
Them: I can still meet today
I get responses like this all the time, and I don't feel like my initial text is too much.
This is a perfect example.
For me it’s
*Is my firewall set correctly (with how the firewall is set )
And
*I will hold off on installing the new program until I hear if the firewall is correct
The answer I get back?
*Did you install the new program?
Are you serious?
I haven't done it very often, but the few times I haven't answered all off the questions in an email has been because some of the questions are a waste of time. I had an engineer recently ask me if I could move the location of where I was running a pipe through a floor grating. Changing the location would have changed nothing, made my job more difficult, and would have been a tripping hazard. All off this could have been avoided if they had gotten or from behind their desk and just gone and looked at what I was working on in person. I ignored their question and sent more pictures of the area. They finally said that I was good to proceed with my original plan.
Yes
Yesn't
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.
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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.
It's a mixture of stupidity and laziness.
try numbering them
OK, there are thousands, possibly millions of people who do this.
Reluctant upvote
Yes they are that lazy. The average office worker also has the attention span of a gnat. Write shorter emails with fewer questions if you can.