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More than half of USAmericans can't read to a sixth grade level, what does this actually mean? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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Like, in a practical sense? Do you have any stories or examples from your life?

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[–] 29 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Work emails have to be “dumbed down” to get co-workers to respond.

If I send the fully detailed email I want to, explaining what the situation is, what actions I need them to take and why, I get ghosted 9/10 and have to waste time getting their attention.

If instead I send one sentence emails I can at least get a response and back and forth conversation going. The majority of my co-workers have difficulty parsing anything more than like 2 paragraphs for relevant info.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I work on an app that's pretty complex and requires a lot of back and forth between devs, customers, and the people who do all the training/sales. I've had A LOT of success using numbered bullet points instead of writing normal sentences and paragraphs.

    Something about the numbers makes them want to read it in order instead of skimming and it being broken down and labeled lets me respond with things like, "great, what about the 3rd bullet point?" Instead of having to repeat things. Plus most of my coworkers are in Texas so they love bullets.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I have to agree hard with this, something about paragraphs says "chatgpt made this" and it's probably safe to assume it's long meandering non-sense stuffed with word salads, fluff, etc. and a bit at the end granting yourself an honorary PHD in early 1900s English literature. My friend even once told me they go off on unnecissary tangets and annecdotes that add nothing.

    • Bulleted lists are awesome
    • numbers aren't even necessary for most of the value
      • caveat: unless order strictly matters
      • nested bullet points are awesome for grouping sub-thoughts
      • my friend told me unnessary tangnts as nested bullet points are great because you can include them anyways but it's easier for fast readers to skip over in a safe organized manor.
    • still an info dump, but human parsable and navigatable
    • faster to go through, like an indexed database
    • Texas Delenda Est
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  • [–] [S] 5 points 2 years ago

    I really dislike writing a long email that contains in very simple text everything that is required of them, maybe some of the background, and I either get ghosted or only the very last thing (or very first thing) in the email gets responded to. Usually from clients rather than coworkers.

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