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The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail
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."
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My spelling's pretty good, too, but not perfect, so no flames please!
The CB App. What's your 20?
It seems like there are two separate possible problems here: people are coming into a company without the writing skills they need, and/or employees are not treating email communication with the same professionalism as other company documents.
:)
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...)
Newsflash: In corporate AMERICA, English is required learning.
Newsflash 2: People who speak English as a second language are often better at correct grammar then native English-speakers.
Most people who learn English as a second language tend to have a very good command of its written form; this is because in most schools abroad English is taught following a grammar-first/speech-later approach.
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.
-- the cake is a lie
I honesty can't stand to even deal with someone who uses shorthand such as "u" or "ur". I think that one of the causes of this is poor typing skills. If you can't type fast enough, "u" or "ur" is easier than typing "you" or "your". These people must just assume people don't mind reading that garbage.
Spend some of that $3.1B on typing skills as well as language skills!
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.
See what I've been reading.
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.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
As evidence the article cites the following quote: ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
"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.
After all, Outlook automatically corrects your spelling for you as you type.
"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.
Sloppy writing implies carelessness at best, ineptitude at worst. It's not okay to write badly in a business setting; at least not in inter-business communication.
Why is anything anything?
I worked as a secretarial temp in college, and let me tell you: executives have *never* been terribly literate (well, at least since the 80's; I assume it wasn't much different before that). It's only that they used to have secretaries type their correspondence, so nobody knew.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
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.
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."
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
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.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.