Unrequited

Email can be so annoying. Well, that and the people you are corresponding (is this the correct word?) with can make the medium frustrating. It probably shouldn’t be surprising but I’m (finally) starting to understand that I must vary my writing style according to the recipient in order to elicit the desired response. What’s bothering me at the moment is the tendency some people have of giving partial responses.

I send out something that requires the answer to more than one question and in the reply only one of my queries is addressed. (Not to say that it’s necessarily answered, but that’s a whole new rant.) How one specific question seems deserving of a response yet others are left ignored like the smelly kids at the school dance baffles me.

Apparently, the liberal application of question marks is insufficient to clean up some of my queries and make them presentable. After the phenomenon of selective response reoccurred a number of times I started using other beautification techniques to draw attention to the wallflowers of the class; perhaps repetition, numbering or even BOLD CAPS would enable the shunned inquiries to be deemed danceworthy.

Enough of the silly metaphor.

One person who I correspond with will only answer the last question asked so I only pose one query per email. Short attention span I guess. Well, that or they really like getting email.

My annoyance with the email exchange with one person lately has been getting the better of me. First I number my questions. They reply and answer some but inexplicably not the others. I then cut & paste the previous email, removing the questions that got replies and resend. I know I’m badgering; just the learning curve of effective communication can be so frustrating and yes, I’m Irascible.

Any particular email annoyances/strategies?