The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail 1267
Dave writes "There is a pretty amusing/sad article about functional illiteracy when it comes to professional e-mails. Some of the samples are just ridiculous."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach
i m a l337 riter! (Score:5, Insightful)
My spelling's pretty good, too, but not perfect, so no flames please!
Not too suprising (Score:1, Insightful)
Illiterate? Or just unprofessional? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the first problem, either a) don't hire people who can't write, or b) provide on-the job training to bring writing skills up to an acceptable level.
For the second, I think the company needs to make a clear set of standards for both internal and external communication, and enforce them. External communication - to customers, etc. - is particularly important. Anything as badly written as those examples would be deleted from my inbox before I got to the end of the first sentence.
I used to work as a technical writer for a large company, and they kept us busy. It's fine to hire engineers who are good at what they do, even if they don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to decipher and rewrite everything that comes out of the engineering dept.
PS. I respectfully submit that the headline should read either "The illegibility of email" or "The illiteracy of corporate america"... I might try to make my email literary, but not literate (and my slashdot posts are probably neither...)
God help us (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Sherwood advises in her guide...
Personally I like the other person's suggestion that you should be allowed only two exclamation points in [your] whole life. I've seen SO MANY DAMN CAPS and exclamation points!!! that I WANT TO SHOOT SOMEONE!!!!!
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works. [wired.com]
Free Flat Screens [freeflatscreens.com] | Free iPod Photo [freephotoipods.com]
Re:Time to ditch the English Language? (Score:2, Insightful)
Proof reading isn't a waste of time. Only the lazy would argue that.
Problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Add to that the fact that most people are slow at typing, and their thoughts outrun their fingers and they forget to type some of those words. I see this every day in our online support desk requests.
People just need to take the time to read what they write in their correspondance, and most just don't.
Re:Not too suprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Trust me, I am British. "Yank Bashing" is something of a national sport since the empire fell apart
Bad email is not in any way an America only thing (neither are falling standards in education!). I have seen emails sent to customers which make me cringe. I know people for whom English is a 4th of 5th language who can compose better emails than some born and bred Brits.
A letter would be passed to a workmate to "have a quick look at", or typed by a secretary. Email is seen as being in some way less important. Wrongly so!
Not PM's (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm glad that a lot of local CS programs are now requiring technical writing and/or professional writing courses as part of the undergrad requirements. At least my school is.
I also think that it wouldn't hurt for employers explicitly encourage email standards. Seriously, if you frown upon that idea, you're likely an offender. The encouraged style shouldn't mean you have to write Tolstoy-esque emails...just don't write your mysterious thought process, spell-check it and click send.
Oh, and hope that Slashdot posts haven't ruined you by now
Re:Have they ever heard of English as a 2nd langua (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers.
ESL musings (Score:5, Insightful)
My spoken English, and especially my understanding of it, has improved by leaps and bounds since I started living in an English speaking country (Canada). I wish I could say the same about my writing: due to being constantly exposed to your/you're and similar constructs, I feel its quality has definitely decreased.
Are emails vs. letters apples-to-apples? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. In many companies (mine is one), email is a less intrusive replacement for face-to-face conversations. Rather than walk across the building to ask something that is not urgent, I will send an email and wait for the reply. In this context, email is replacing not written correspondence, but oral communication. Thus, I would expect it to mirror the latter, with the style of speech rather than writing.
2. Since a single email is a piece of something (the contents of a mailbox) rather than a standalone document (e.g., a Word document), it has less "weight" in the mind of many people and does not deserve as much time in construction. The fact that it is electronic exacerbates this. A former boss had nicely eloquent writing in Word, yet was consistently using words like "yo" and "shouldda" in email.
3. Many of the people sending email would not be preparing written documents 15 years ago (frequently for the reasons listed in my first point). Thus, comparing corporate literacy now to that in the past is far from apples-to-apples.
Of course, none of this is an excuse for the abysmal failures of grammar given in the article.
It's amazing what people put in their emails (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm always joking about how these people are represented by their emails. In fact you could modify a bad joke and make it worse:
"You might be a corporate idiot if..."
- You type all your emails in the MS Comic Sans font
- You sign your emails with a custom signature in some big, illegible font
- You don't know how to properly quote the email you're responding to
- You type your emails in a needlessly large font
- You type your emails in a very loud, needless color (Fucia anyone?!)
- You never learn how to spell, and you send out all your emails with 1st grade-level spelling errors
I could go on, but you get the picture. I SO wish that part of our performance appraisals would take into consideration how you present yourself in corporate communications. We have tons of people in executive positions who actually think that combining several of those items I've listed above is the best way to get their point across.And once you get a poorly worded email, written in Comic Sans font, colored hot pink, you have a lot less respect for the person who authored it, regardless of their role, or the content of the email. It's amazing to me that these peoples bosses don't see this the same way, but often they're equally guilty.
Glad to know we're not alone though!
Don't forget about typing skills... (Score:5, Insightful)
Spend some of that $3.1B on typing skills as well as language skills!
Re:How they become? (Score:4, Insightful)
And then there are the people who have professional services do their resumes, CVs and cover letters -- either once for manual submission, or as part of a headhunter type operation where fixing their clients weaknesses is part of the job.
And let's face it, when YOU were in college, what was the general intellectual orientation of most business/marketing school types, anyway? I found they nearly all fit the stereotype -- frat/sorority members with more interest in their personal appearance and social standing. Grades (and not necessarily *learning*) merely being important if they had some kind of status-oriented grad school plans or a cash payback plan from Mom and Dad for not flunking out.
To be fair, there were people that fit that description who were real smart, too, but most of them really weren't. College was something they were expected to do, like wear Polo-brand clothes, and join the right Greek house, and get a corporate job.
Is it any surprise that once this anti-intellectual group is in a position where they have to represent their ideas in writing that they fall apart? I think half the problem with them isn't just a lack of writing skills, it's also the quality of the ideas. It's hard to write well about a bad idea.
Re:How they become? (Score:3, Insightful)
A barber, on the other hand, could reasonably be expected to have somebody other than himself cut his hair.
Two jobs ago... (Score:1, Insightful)
Interestingly, there were no spelling errors, and MS-Word did not indicate any grammar errors either. As far as MS-Word was concerned, the document was perfect.
However it was *riddled* with grammar errors. Improper comma usage, misplaced prepositions, improper capitalization, and several other types were scattered all over it. Not a single page had fewer than three distinct errors. I showed it to one of my co-workers (a known grammar-nazi) and her eyes just about popped out of her head.
Perhaps too much reliance on Word's (obviously insufficient) grammar checker is part of the problem?
Incidentally, when I submitted a list of grammar corrections (I was as political as I could be...) there was a distinctly silent response. I never got to see the final release of the manual, so I don't know if the corrections were applied.
Re:Illiterate? Or just unprofessional? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO, if an engineer is imprecise in his language, in any medium, he will be imprecise in other more important areas. This is especially true for a software engineer/developer/code monkey since C, Java, Perl and Python are but different languages where you are trying to speak to a machine, not a human. A Technical Writer shouldn't have to do much more than parse the comments in the code, provide helpful diagrams and give a higher level view of how to use the software. Using precise, thought out language in all your communications means that precision will spill over into your code. As an example, here you are espousing that you just need someone like yourself - a communications expert - to correct the errors of others and you make a simple spelling mistake (don't have great writing skills - as log as you also hire someone to) which gives your credibility a hit. Allowing yourself the luxury of a native English speaker being able to over-look that error and still unuderstand you is what starts the downward spiral.
As far as the article goes, this is the issue - people let thier communications skills atrophy. They take it for granted others are able to correct thier 'misteaks'[1] or will reply back with a "Hunh?", and the idea can eventually be parsed out of the conversation. It's a question of discipline, of placing a real value of your communications ability and keeping that ability at its peak.
I read over every e-mail I before I click send and ask "Do I sound lucid, professional and do I actually communicate my idea well"? It takes a bit longer to do, but it also cuts down on mis-communication.
Soko
[1] Taken from that old poster that says "Know Misteaks Aloud!"
Re:How they become? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was teaching econ, I several times made the mistake of setting an essay test. It showed that the American students couldn't write. When I marked them down for incomprehensiblity, they were shocked! ``You should grade the econ, not the grammer.'' they said. Unfortunately, the grammer and organization was bad enough that there wasn't any coherent content to grade.
Some of them did know the material, but it doesn't matter what you know, if you can't communicate it clearly to others. If you can't communicate, you might as well know nothing, because that's what everyone will assume.
By contrast, some students for whom English was a second language had grammer problems, but their writing was coherent enough that I could figure out what they meant.
Re:How they become? (Score:1, Insightful)
equiv. to 'they'
They don't matter
not
They doesn't matter
Drooling thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end.
Well I for one think this is cause it's just too easy to do so; as many slashdotters at one point or the other claimed they could "type faster then they can think", or certainly "type faster then writing a letter" (which requires some thought to compose, certainly if you're going to handwrite; it's a bit nono to scratch out your errors in formal mailing.)
If you're able to just open up a browser, your email-client, type your first thoughts out at 300chars/min, and hit send in a matter of seconds you don't have this process of thinking out what you want to say, or which message you want to bring across. (or make sure it's understandable what you're trying to bring over)
I catch myself as well at alot of 'stupid errors', while checkreading the next day what I wrote earlier. While I was pretty confident it was properly written.There should be a 2minute rule before hitting "send", to cure people having elliptic seizures on their keyboards while sending formal communication.
The nature of the medium.... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the past if you received a communication from a superior it would be either verbal or written. Written correspondence would take time and likely involve a proofreading by an administrative assistant.
Your response would also take time and go through a similar process.
E-mail allows instantaneous communication. I'm not sure how everyone else on Slashdot feels, but when I receive an e-mail I feel as if it requires my immediate attention. This is a radically different mental process than if I receive physically written correspondence. The extra time and reduction of immediacy ensures that my written correspondence is of a much higher quality than my e-mails.
The immediate nature of e-mail means that our superiors may be expecting an immediate response to their communication. You may simply not feel that you have the time to compose a well written response, and that a timely response is more important than a coherent one.
The audience certainly matters as well. If you are writing a report that will be physically distributed to many people you are more likely to take the necessary time to write a coherent response. Your response, especially if it is going to customers, reflects upon: you, your company, your division within that company, etc.
I do not see the same consideration when mass e-mails are sent out, be they within a specific organization or between various organizations.
These people, probably, know how to write. They just do not feel that they have the time to write properly. If they do not know how to write then the 'remedial' training suggested in the article may be appropriate. If the real issue is time and the culture surrounding e-mail communication, that sort of training is not only inappropriate but demeaning to those individuals.
Another issue: Netiquette (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I run into at my job is not so much spelling and grammar. I fortunately run into very few problems with that. What sets my teeth on edge is lack of basic netiquette skills.
For instance, I cringe when I see someone reply to a long email outlining multiple points in a discussion, only to see the person head the message with "My comments below IN CAPS". This person then proceeds to do just that, namely give all her comments in all uppercase. Ugh. There is no need for this. It is very clear what is quoted text and what is not quoted text.
Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.
At least I no longer have a boss like I did on my last job. She wrote her emails in all lowercase and used HTML blink tags.
This is the worst they can come up with? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information
The reason why that message seems so "incomprehensible" is not because of the poor writing but rather because we, the not-intended readers, do not have knowledge of the systems discussed in the email.
Actually the quote looks like it would be quite understandable if I knew
(1) what the status reports were,
(2) what the Barry file is
(3) who Murray is
(4) what "information" they provided
(5) the details of the technobable at the end of the email.
Clearly all of these are things the intended recipient would already know.
I could write an email about an advanced physics topic using perfect grammar and spelling and it would be no more comprehensible to the average reader than this email.
If that is the worst they can come up with than corporate America is in good shape.
To her, it probably was correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
"patience" is spelled correctly. In context, it's probably the wrong word, but it's still spelled correctly.
I've seen that happen quite a few times - people relying on the Outlook/Word spellchecked and it corrects their email by inserting correctly spelled, but irrelevant words.
The CxO drones don't even notice it.
Re:How they become? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having to go through multiple iterations of the message to make sure your point is clearly presented can slow things down significantly.
Re:i m a l337 riter! (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously I think the problem goes deeper:
- All the text messaging/chatting etc. means people are perpetually in a frame of mind where anything goes - no punctuations, weird short forms, spelling mistakes and other improper constructs. Some of tools (messenger) encourage people to not bother fixing typos etc. All this makes it harder for people to switch from the informal to formal (work email) mode.
- Some editors add to the problem: At work I've often see people who like to hit a new line after about 70-80 columns. But doing this in Outlook (which by default has M$ Word turned on), capitalizes the first letter on every new line.
- I also read somewhere that it's been researched and proven that reading and correcting stuff online (can't find the link) is harder. So, the only thing that can be fixed easily is spelling mistakes (if people decide to use the spellchecker).
- Many jobs don't require the employees to do a lot of writing. So if emailing in English is an acquired skill, it wanes away even before they've mastered the language.
Many technical jobs don't require a high-level of language proficiency before hire. This is bound to show up somewhere along the line.
Re:Language evolves... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not as bothered by the dialect as I am by the lack of coherent organization. The latter is the worse problem.
For example, let's say you had written this instead of your actual post:
I think it is safe to say that this rewriting, (while still correctly spelt and roughly grammatical), obscures or even alters your intended meaning. This is exactly what many people are doing to themselves.
The dialect issue just makes things worse. If your hypothesis regarding the entropy of the new dialect is correct, please remember that increased entropy makes reliable communication more difficult.
My feeling is that the new dialect is optimized for bandwidth, at the expense of precision and comprehensibility. I can accept that tradeoff for IM and similar bandwidth-constrained environments.
However, it's frustrating to deal with a high-entropy dialect when more bandwidth is available, particularly where (as in business) clarity and precision are more important.
Re:How they become? (Score:5, Insightful)
Laziness, Incentives and Writing that Works (Score:2, Insightful)
There are people that are functionally illiterate. However, the main culprits in most of the places I have worked at are laziness and few obvious incentives to communicate well.
Writing clearly and well takes time and effort. If you read standard reference books on the topic like Writing That Works [amazon.com], the bulk of the suggestions are about thinking clearly, considering the needs of your audience and spending time to get it right. Examples:
Unfortunately, most workplaces do not evaluate employees based on how well they communicate. Unless communication is viewed as part of your "real job" that carries incentives to do it well, people will not spend the additional time to clarify their ideas, requests and responses so that they are communicated clearly. Why bother when you have tons of "real work" waiting for you on your desk?
Hey Business! (Score:3, Insightful)
That needs to be emphasized because middle managers aren't often told they were WRONG.
Once again we're reminded of the timeless wisdom of the Breakfast Club:
"Without trigonometry there'd be no engineering."
"Without lamps, there would be no light."
And so it is with our current obsessive contempt for education in any form except buzzwords and MBAs. Reading and Writing is sort of important. JUST as important as Arithmetic. In fact, MORE important because without reading and writing it would be impossible to even explain mathematics, or anything else for that matter.
The written word is the basis for the entirety of civilization. Without the written word we would still be wandering around looking for food for a living. Being able to write well and comprehend what is read is a very important job skill. In fact, it is the most important job skill. All of the bullshit you shovel so you can stuff your pockets faster has to be WRITTEN by someone who can SPELL and form SENTENCES and PARAGRAPHS. In other words, you need to hire WRITERS in addition to team players.
So, Mr. functionally illiterate middle manager, the next time you're interviewing an English or Literature major for WHATEVER JOB, please be reminded that an English or Literature major was probably responsible for your ability to sort-of read the resume you're about to throw in the trash.
Have a nice day.
Re:Another issue: Netiquette (Score:2, Insightful)
Three-province shooting spree, anyone?
Re:Don't forget about typing skills... (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember the first time I got a message from someone who typed like this in or around 1997. It was a rather long message and I remember it took me twice as long to read it than normal writing would and reading it required a lot of extra effort. Good readers don't read letters or even words. Most people who read a lot read three or more words at a time and recognize the words by their shape and length.
If you can't type fast enough to type complete words then you are just transferring the slowdown from yourself to the reader. I'm sure there is some physics-related law somewhere to explain this effect.
It's nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How they become? (Score:1, Insightful)
I studied English at Oxford (one of the ancient British universities that Harvard and Yale modelled themselves on). I came out with a damn high grade.
Not waving my dick around here, just establishing that I took a course where good grammar might be considered a plus, and did well on it.
I also regularly began sentences with "and" and "but" in my essays and theses. It didn't seem to have any detrimental effect on marks. The logical conclusions are either that either English academics marking papers for a prestigious course in the English language don't give a fuck about formal English, or that opening a sentence with a conjunction is no longer even necessarily informal and non-academic. Up to you which line you choose to take, though...
College Degrees (Score:1, Insightful)
I would hire a person that was literate and could do the job, rather than just hiring someone with a piece of paper in his hand. The two aren't necessarily the one and the same.
Re:How they become? (Score:3, Insightful)
That gets brought up time and again on forums from every topic you can think of. People use the excuse "I don't have time" to construct proper sentences or spell check because it's "just a forum" or "just a quick note" and no matter how many times people bring up what kind of impression that makes some just don't get it.
Re:How they become? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wearing a tuxedo to a marriage is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it shows a reverence and respect for the event.
There's more to society than cash.
I still think the origional text is whacked... (Score:3, Insightful)
Original:
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information
It's almost like a run on sentance with more open brackets than closed. Let's see what a rewrite can do:
"I updated the Status report with the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via e-mail (they are in the Barry file). To confirm my understanding of his message, it seems we provided Murray with incorrect information. However, after verifying the controls on JBL, JBL has the indicator as 'B'. I wanted to make sure that with the recent changes I made today did not have an impact, before Murray changed the setting on the mainframe to 'C' again."
It may not be technically correct, but I'll wager that for most people it reads a lot more smoothly.
Don't quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about ehat you want to say and write a self-contained reply without the ugly point for point nit-picking style promoted by quoting.
This has the added benefit, that your receipients either take your interpretation of what was said before or have to work and dig through their own archive.
I had the experience, that this leads to calmer mail exchanges.
Re:How they become? (Score:2, Insightful)
He's never needed another job, so he hasn't spent any time on his CV
Re:How they become? (Score:2, Insightful)
What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.
On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?
It's not okay to write badly in a business setting;
And why not? If you get the point across to your coworkers, why should you waste an extra 20 seconds checking your grammar? Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.
at least not in inter-business communication.
Ok, you may have a point here. Inter-business commuication is on a different playing field where making your company look good is an additional factor beyond just "getting the job done".
Re:i m a l337 riter! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, people not realizing how spelling and grammar checking programs work cause many problems. I don't think people have ever given a long document to MS word and seen some of the blundering errors it makes when blanketly accepting its changes. Few people realize the number of mistakes a grammar checking program makes, and this leads to ignorantly depending on them as an unequivocal source on the english language.
But proof-reading is not the answer either. Proof reading is an acquired skill that takes a great deal of practice. The best way to get this practice isn't to write random articles and look them over, but rather to read. My writing went through the roof in school when I started reading all the time. On standardized tests for grammar and reading comprehension, I used to score in the 30th percentile. Once I began reading books diligently, my scores increased to approximately the 95th percentile. Granted, this isn't a formal study, but I have found this works well for others. I have many family members(cousins) that learned to put together a coherent argument after they began reading something more than the text in a video game.
Re:How they become? (Score:4, Insightful)
"New York Times" is guilty too (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just corporate email. The "New York Times" now routinely spells "NASCAR" as "Nascar" as well as mangling other acronyms. I have written to them several times to find out what is going on but they haven't replied. I think it's the result of using MS Word which has a nasty tendency to downcase things.
Since we're on the subject, I'll bring up a related complaint: I think the program which checks your spelling is a "spelling checker" and not a "spell checker" (unless you're some sort of warlock or witch). I know, I need to relax and get used to it but it does bother me.
Re:How they become? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody should care because the intended recipient may not be the only recipient as a matter is discussed. My emails get forwarded and (b)cc:'d to others all the time and I receive similiar correspondance every day. Concise, understandable emails mean I don't have to repeat myself.
They also stand the test of time. Ever have an email come up a few months or a year later and have to address it? Something well composed is easier to explain than a choppy stream of consciousness.
Sure, its only 20 seconds, but the only point in editing your message is to conform to implied social norms - an objective that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Thankfully those silly social norms have not yet been applied to emails yet.
This shows such a lack of business savvy and professionalism it is actually depressing. You can't even invest half a minute into reviewing your work and making sure it's presentable because in your limited view it has nothing to do with your actual job. The simple fact is that in any organization you don't exist in a vacuum and being able to effectively communicate is a primary job function not some "silly social norm." Save those anarchist tendencies for IRC and /. Whether it is "fair" or not, in a business environment consistently poor writing is going to get you labeled as stupid and inept. The big problem with this is the judgement will many times come from upper management due to the simple fact that your email is the primary work product they see.
Soft skills count and as the job market gets tighter those skills will be the ones that differentiate you from the rest of the pack. It is actually called reality and not "silly social norm."
Re:Consistantly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How they become? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not considering that the implied solution is acceptable - the utter surrender of personal time to the interruptions of the job. To hell with that, my time is my time, and work time is work time.
Re:How they become? (Score:5, Insightful)
I may be able to interpret poorly written English, but that's not to say it's enjoyable. Presentation errors not only make the individual committing them look bad, but also take away focus from the actual content.
I expect people communicating with me in a business context to make a reasonable effort to communicate clearly in much the same way that I would be offended if a coworker chose to give me messages scribbled in sloppily written crayon: Poor presentation distracts from the content. The scribbled memo would needlessly require extra time to read and interpret; likewise do poorly spelled messages.
Another aspect that falls out of the above is one of respect. Since comprehending sloppily-written messages takes more time and effort, writing well is nothing less than displaying respect for the value of the time of one's readers, whereas writing poorly is stating that your time and effort is more valuable than that of the individual to whom you send your message. I make a serious effort to do this when writing material for others' consumption; consequently, I find it only reasonable for others to respond in kind.
They should and do. People who send poorly written email (particularly mass mailings) are genuinely and rightly offensive, for all the reasons above.Re:How they become? (Score:4, Insightful)
This myth prevails because it's what students are taught in school.
Email vs. IM (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally disagree and always try and write decent email, but unfortunately a lot of people take the same attitude towards email that they take towards IM...as long as its just barely good enough to kinda sorta communicate whatever they were trying to communicate, then it's OK. They don't think about the impression it makes on other people.
We (technical types) tend to think email should be written with the same care as papers and snail mail, whereas to a lot of other people it's just a less responsive form of IMing. It's a peeve of mine, but there's not really anything anyone can do about it.
Re:How they become? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) So the recipient doesn't have to spend 20 seconds trying to work out what your meant, or wasting both his and your time by replying asking for a clarification.
2) So people don't think you're a moron.
3) So people outside the company don't think you're all morons (if the message is forwarded, as often happens, sometimes inadvertently).
Anything you write, anywhere, can come back to haunt you.
Context (Score:2, Insightful)
But I do find it interesting (as a Linguist) that there seems to be a trend towards simplification of written language. English especially needs this. My interpretation of "IM"-speak is that people are trying to reduce English orthography to a more phonetic writing system. Once I was familiar with the IPA (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html [gla.ac.uk]) it made perfect sense to me that orthography should be phonetic and that English was particularly bad in this regard. Now, it would probably be a big slap in the face to the history of the language to shift English orthography to being phonetic as we would loose most of the ties with other languages, but is that a very high price to pay for greater accessability? I pity ESL students who have to learn how to spell in English. And it has the potential to make written communication much, much quicker.
Language, like the people who use it, is a living thing. Maybe it's time ours evolved some more.
Re:How they become? (Score:4, Insightful)
You work in a purchasing department, can you tell me what this person wanted?
"Onetwenty foot lenth of steel, 1/2 in thk, 3 in angle."
Here, we're not so much concerned about the spelling. Is this a twenty foot length of steel? Or is it a 120 length of steel? Either one could be wrong, (though one is far more likely than the other) so you have to call for clarification, which takes time, and instead of processing the purchase, you have to call this chap on the radio, phone, and/or e-mail and wait for him to get back, and god-forbid if it's a hot project, and he's now on vacation or hit by a beer truck. Time, by the cliched equasion, equals currancy, aka, business.
This is just metal, simple metal, hunks of steel, imagine something more complicated. Something electronic? Something computer-related? Imagine the confusion of a common omission of the final comma in a list, exemplified by this famous line:
"My parents, God and Ayn Rand."
Put a comma in between "God" and "And" and it's slightly more clear it's a list. Unless that person is claiming divine lineage or a chunk of an Objectivist trust fund . .
Okay, obviously, that's a purchase, we hope that person is specific as they are conveying a need (though I can tell you that often those folks expect you to know what they want). Critical stuff. So, what about e-mail then? What about normal stuff?
People judge you, rightly or wrongly, by the words that you use. Beyond the base level technical things, it's a game, where even ORDER on the TO: line can have something to do with how the item is read. ("Can" does not equal always, by the way.) Stupid, perhaps, but it is so.
And if takes you 20 minutes to check your grammar for anything of normal length, you haven't internalized the rules, and thusly are inefficient. It's not about perfect grammar, either; hyper-correctness is, in itself, totally obnoxious and useless and paralyzing. (I know I misspelled a few things in here, a few grammar gaffaws, but I hope I'm clear enough.)
I agree, if you're clear and everything is good, then great. You needn't be able to diagram the perfect sentance, but you should be able to state your goal clearly; and if anyone comes back with questions, or, worse, doesn't ask you the questions they have, then your language has failed, or maybe the person is an idiot.
People you may or may not ever meet make decisions based on your communication. Treat it as such.
In the interests of full disclosure: my Masters Degree is going to be in Rhetoric and Professional Writing. Waste of time for some, I imagine, but I think it's interesting. Takes all kinds, I guess.
Re:Very Inprofesional (Score:2, Insightful)
I've yet to see a high level executive that didn't delegate emails and memos to a lower level assistant and either:
(a) let their executive assistant into their email account in order to send the email or
(b) send the email given to them by their assistant without reading more than the first sentence
My bigger pet peeve is coworkers who do not read past the first line because they're "in a hurry" - and then ask questions which were either addressed in the email or the question does not apply. Reading comprehension is often as piss poor as their ability to formulate a coherent reply.
Re:How they become? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How they become? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hey Business! (Score:3, Insightful)
cubicledrone [slashdot.org] wrote:
This is, most likely, untrue: Written language is only known to date back about 5,500 years [ncl.ac.uk] while agriculture is thought to date back 10,000 years [spelt.com] or more [comp-archaeology.org]. The written word can hardly be the basis of agriculture if it post dates it.
The Title is Funny. (Score:4, Insightful)
No irony was intended. Let's try another more direct form,
CNet can't write a title.
Sam, the limits of form imposed by advertisement funded, dead tree writing are clear to see. I'm sure the title was made up by some editor, but I feel bad for you.
This wasn't posted by CmdrTaco.
When the nations "Paper of Record" can't get it right, what do you expect from the rest of us? Slashdot digs up news that matters and that's all I care about. Noam Chomsky would say that the media should not be able to write a proper sentence if it's working right. He claims the media's purpose is to limit thought and it does so by presenting what it's owners consider the limits of an acceptable future in an obnoxious and belligerent way. You are supposed to think of news and politics as unpleasant, unpolite and ultimately something beyond your control. What you get from your average 15 minutes a day of news "consumption" is direction not information. George Orwell's "Duck Speak" is exactly what you should expect.
Go back to sleep now.
Re:Consistantly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How they become? (Score:2, Insightful)
Go back and proofread that sentence. What the hell does it mean?
Pot calling the kettle black?
Re:How they become? (Score:1, Insightful)
That simply makes you lazy and sloppy. I wouldn't want to employ somebody who is lazy and sloppy.
Good Writing Equals Smarts (Score:3, Insightful)
Some may argue that there's no relationship between writing ability and general intelligence, but my reasoning states that in order to produce good writing, one must recognize good writing. And that requires exposure to good writing through reading. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest that the less a person reads, the more likely he is to have an average or below average vocabulary and base of knowledge.
Moral of the story is thus: if you write poorly, chances are you're a poor reader. And if you're a poor reader, chances are you just aren't cut out for the IQ game.
- IP
What about chat programs at work? (Score:2, Insightful)
When you're trying to ask a technical question, it becomes far more important to be clear when communicating. But, I swear, some of the people I support would be put to shame by a 6th-grader's grammar skills.