zlacker

>>tagoll+(OP)
Nuance is hard to convey in groups, but I believe that *a small part of the problem is a lack of design*. Many peoples' eyes glaze over when they see a wall of text in an email and they just skim rather than read. Some simple things to enhance communications can be the following.

* Use a few bullet points to put attention on the main points you want to convey.

* Without going overboard, use a tasteful amount of graphic design (bolding one key sentence or whatever).

* Break up a giant nuanced email into sections.

* If something is critical, make it visual: a picture, explainer video, or an infographic can be really useful for something key.

This is harder than it looks. A quote attributed to Mark Twain is "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." It's a lot easier to go overboard than to distill what needs to be conveyed into the core elements.

>>logica+ac
How much do you want to bet most people will read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance?

Hell, I've learned not to ask more than one question in an email. The first one is the only one to get answered.

>>mcguir+2p
> ...read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance?

Oh hell yes, this is definitely a thing with lots of people. It's one of those WTF realizations that everyone who works in a corporate environment gets slapped in the face with really hard.

There are certain people for which you MUST give 1, maybe 2 sentences at a maximum, address them by name, AND, make sure that they're the only person in the "to:" field. Anything different and you risk ghosting or first-thing-only response.

If there's other folks in the cc who I know may actually read for context, I will add a '"*** details ***"' separator after a few blank lines and then write up normal paragraphs. I know the "details" stuff will get ignored by the target, but that's OK. It's just there for reference and for others who may chime in.

>>crispy+Zv
Perhaps those people have just read too many emails in the past that ended up being a waste of their time? Over time they learned to glance at things and predict what the rest of the email is going to say.

Think about those download websites where you have to find the download link in the middle of all the ads that are masquerading as download buttons. There's a lot of information on those pages, but people become really adept at spotting the real download button. The rest of the information gets ignored.

I think this is why some people insist on verbal communication when you're trying to teach them something. If they get a text guide then they will gloss over things and skip steps leading to failure. With verbal communication you're effectively there to keep them at least mildly focused so that they don't gloss over things.

>>Aerroo+HW
> If they get a text guide then they will gloss over things and skip steps leading to failure.

I find this to be very true when learning new programming techniques. Most learning resources start from a significantly more basic starting point than most learners are at, so I'm liable to skip until I start seeing things I don't already know how to guess. The problem is that there are often important subtleties buried amidst the obvious knowledge.