I'm just starting to dip my toes back into the freelance web development world, after deciding indie game development wasn't for me.

My main problem with clients has always been 1) They don't really know what they want, beyond "a website", and 2) The reading comprehension of pretty much everyone I interact with is surprisingly low. I've mostly dealt with small-business owners, whose personalities seem to veer towards the eccentric.

With my current client, I'll send out emails requesting clarification for certain features that need to be implemented on the site. If I'm lucky, I'll get an email back with at least one of the issues having been addressed. There's been emails where the response was in no way relevant. At one point I even got a photo of someone's backyard sent to me as a response.

I've learned to only send him a single line of text if it requires a response, to increase my chances of getting something I can act on.

I really like making web sites, and programming in general... It's just the frustration of poor communication that makes the job so frustrating. I think if I were more of a salesman/people-person, I would probably be better about figuring out what they really need, and offering solutions to them... rather then just getting upset that they don't what they want.

I've seen people like this doing day to day business: it's absolutely awful. They attend meetings starting with software and ending up with elephants.They can't sit for more than two minutes and there's always phone, email, whatever. To expect for such a personal to produce a written piece on what they want,while they can't even do it verbally,is impossible. These are usually somewhat successful in some sort of a niche but would drown in any other environment.

I see similar issues with support emails. One thing I learnt is to never ask more than one question in an email as only the first question gets answered.

I’m sure it has been getting worse over time. I’m at the stage where I am surprised when I receive a coherent request.

Probably the most common question is “I tried you software, it don’t work”.

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."

Can be shortened to “Hey! Listen!”

Not without loss of several significant subtextual channels: respect, clarity, and intent to name a few. Communication is a discipline; verbal shorthands like these are analogous to copy/paste laziness over thoughtful, intentional code.

> they don't actually read what I wrote

How long are those texts?

What about trying a maybe reverse text order? Start with: "do this, that, that. Because ..."? The actions first? I'm guessing