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.

  • wheeldawgEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    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.

      • wheeldawgEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        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