Dear Email Recipients:
Thank you very much for responding rapidly to the question I sent you. Now, please go back to my original message, and respond to the other four questions that were in that message.
Thank you for your reading comprehension,
Annoyed Re-Sender of Emails
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Dear. Prof. So and So,
Can we meet -- name a place/time? Also, can you send me the EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND TIME SENSITIVE FIVE WORDS I NEED FOR A GRANT APPLICATION.
Reply: let's meet on Friday, just after the time you would normally go home
I'll add two:
Dear Email Recipient:
Thank you for your question! It may have escaped your notice that *THAT VERY QUESTION* was already answered in my original email. To help you, I have re-sent the original email.
ARSOE (was going to leave out the "of", but the acronym was unfortunate)
And another:
Dear Email Recipient:
Thank you for answering my four-question email with the succinct one-word answer of "Yes". That was most helpful.
Annoyed Emailer.
One question per email.
Even then you'll often get LOL instead of a real answer. SRSLY, one question at a time.
/surprised I have to keep telling you folks this...
I've started to explicitly number the questions / requests in my emails to deal with this problem. It helps clarify things for the recipient and has improved my success rate in getting answers to:
1) My first question.
2) My second question.
3) My third question.
and, if I'm lucky,
4) My forth question.
Admittedly it makes for ugly writing, but c'est la vie.
You see, the questions are being answered on a "flow basis"...
:-)
One thing per email. One thing only. Basic principle of communication. Same goes for forum posts, phone conversations (of the information gathering/exchanging variety), exam questions, image composition, news items, whatever.
We're human, and we're lousy at keeping multiple things active at the same time. If you ask four questions, chances are the recipient is going to clearly remember only one of them. They answer that one thing, and are relieved since they now seem to have fulfilled that obligation you put on them. Yes, the other questions may well be in the very text they're quoting, but that doesn't mean they see it. They know they must have read the email so their brains see no reason to revisit it again. In their minds there was ever only one question. They're not lazy, they're not stupid. They're simply human. Chances are you do the same thing too now and again and never realize it.
You have multiple questions, send multiple emails.
If you get a reply from me at all, I'll answer all four questions. This "one question per e-mail" thing is just loopy.
Dear Person who Outranks Me:
Should we do A or B?
Reply: Yes
*headdesk* Goes off to track person down and discuss face to face.