Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?

I can read

For me it's not intentional. I get fixated on one of the questions that require more mental energy than the others and then forget to answer the rest. I have no excuses. My bad.

People are lazy and stupid, you can ask one question at a time or better yet setup a meeting to ask them verbally, you aren't getting any answers otherwise

I usually number my questions, makes it more obvious

If you've got questions, put them in bullet points.

I'm not scanning a wall of text to find everything.

Yes.

Considering your wording in the last paragraph, I'm going to guess that your writing style is frequently overwhelming. Making sure that questions are clearly isolated (I'd suggest using numeric lists or bullet points) makes it clear what response you're expecting.

Additionally, if you're asking several difficult questions, it's likely that people will lose the thread partway through.

"Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?"

Not much, what is going on with you?

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.

You can get mad at everyone else or you can start playing to the lowest common denominator.

1. Question 1

2. Question 2

3. Question 3

Few people can focus enough to read.

I work in a technical field. In the past few years I’ve learned that interacting by email usually requires one-line sentences or bullet points, with any questions being numbered. No fluff, no secondary thoughts or possibilities. Keep it as minimal as possible.

It still fails to elicit a coherent response about half the time, but it’s the best I’ve found so far.

It didn’t use to be like this. But what’s to blame; screen addiction, microplastics, covid, increased stress, … ?

It's not that they "insist" on not answering, they just have limited reading comprehension and/or attention span. With experience you learn to ask exactly one question in an email, and maybe you'll get an answer some of the time, and if you're lucky it will be coherent.

People read the subject line, assuming it's not longer than about seven words, and then the first 30%, and last 15% of your email, in my experience. You can increase this by adding line breaks and bullets. In my experience, the best responses come from a short paragraph, followed by a couple bullet points, then a couple sentences, then your salutation/signature. I try not to write anything longer than that.

try numbering them

Cause frankly, your email is the 235th most important thing on my desk today.

My colleagues complain of the same things, saying they've tried everything. But I never have that issue.

Here's an example of what they might send: Hello Bob, we have just recieved all your documents, so thank you. But upon review, we have found that we are still missing x,y,z. In order to expedite the process we ask for your cooperation.

1. At your earliest convenience, can you please send not more than twelve months of documents x and how they pertain to y?
2. Can you clarify why z contains a substantial difference from the previous times it occurred in September 2020, October 2020? Don't hesitate to contact us with any further questions!

Here's what I would say instead: Hi Bob, to finish the file we require:

1. A max 12 months of documents x (showing y)
2. Why is z now so different from 2020 Sept, Oct? Thanks in advance.

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.

Please answer 2 (two) questions so that I can proceed with my part of this work. Without an answer to both, no more work will be done and the project will be on hold.

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1. Yes or no- Does this mean that the flibbertygibbet must be completed first?

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2. You need to provide further information on the doohickey because there is not enough detail for me to be able to goober the whatchamacallit

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.

Been doing email since it began. Same frustrations.

Solutions (workarounds):

1. Email is structured with "executive summary" & "detail". That way I can write all the words I want but people can only read the first paragraph.
2. Never ask questions. Tell them what I'm going to choose, & give them opportunity to disagree. That way if they don't respond usefully I can take their "non-response" as a response & proceed anyway.
3. If I need to ask a question, use a phone call or go to their desk, or (shudder) make a meeting.

Step 1. Stop emailing my boss.

Step 2. Recognize that if you're thorough and verbose, people's eyes will glaze over and they won't actually read what you send. Conversely, if you're concise and direct, people will complain that you're aloof and not sharing information.

Step 3. Resign yourself to things only getting worse as you get older.