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Comment by apeace | Hacker News Reader

Yes. The biggest problem for me is getting people to read the contents of my emails. There's nothing more infuriating than trying to get an answer to a nuanced question, only to be met with a response which doesn't actually pertain to what you were asking. Or worse: when you answer someone's question completely, and they respond with the same question again.

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I've been told I'm a very literal person and that's why I have this problem. But I have no idea how to intentionally be non-literal... I will frequently ask someone a yes or no question (e.g. do you want to go out for dinner) and they will tell me a fact that would explain their answer (e.g. she had a big lunch at a work event). So... That's a no?

> So... That's a no?

It's also a clarification between "I would like to, but no thanks due to these other circumstances, maybe another time" vs "No, would not like to, probably not ever." It's also giving you the opportunity to counter-offer, as it were: if you're not particularly hungry either, so maybe something more like a small appetizer and a drink?

Plus a million other options, of course.

It's not really a yes or no question to begin with, even if you're thinking of it that way.

Well to be clear, this isn't for a date, this is a common occurrence with my wife. It really is "do you want to do this tonight or don't you". It could be, "I had a big event today so the last thing I want to do is help cook", it could be "I ate a lot and I'm not hungry". I still don't know if she wants to eat out tonight.

I had this discussion with my longtime girlfriend (10 years) the other day. She'll frequently say something tangential, but unrelated and my brain will try to make sense of it causing a bit of awkwardness.

One time we were discussing an upcoming trip and she mentions that her friend invited her to come visit another city. How she phrased it made me think she was inviting me on the trip, even though I wasn't really interested, but she made it clear she wasn't. lol. Sometimes I have to sit her down and tell her that I don't mean anything by asking direct awkward questions because I'm just trying to understand if something is implied or not. I can never tell and that's just how she and many other people phrase things.

Sorry for this random comment. I just saw your comment and had to get it off my chest. IDK what I am but I'm the worst at understanding implied things and I fall for jokes all the time.

I’m perplexed by similar behavior. People insist on mixing fluff with the substance. Let’s first resolve the substance, shall we? Then we can talk the fluff.

I recall in a previous hacker news thread on a similar topic, one commenter said that their hack for this was to put every sentence on a new line, and that it actually helped with people who would otherwise just skim over what he wrote.

The ‘answers’ in the Microsoft ‘help’ forums often suggest that the ‘MVP’ hasn’t read the question properly.

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