Guess you haven't heard of the oil lobby. Detroit doesn't want people to get out of their cars. The politicians are funded by these big businesses - Ford, Exxon etc.
Emails should pass through a compiler. They clean up stuff written in other languages, why not English?
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.
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Guess you haven't heard of the oil lobby. Detroit doesn't want people to get out of their cars. The politicians are funded by these big businesses - Ford, Exxon etc.
Emails should pass through a compiler. They clean up stuff written in other languages, why not English?
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.