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[rone]

A recent survey of 120 American corporations [...] by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation's blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.

[...]

"hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respond . thanking u for ur cooperation."

I expected this to be a problem, but not to this degree.  I certainly don't see it at my company, with the exception of a certain Bush-backing fellow out East who loved excessive punctuation, but reined it in since someone chided him about it.

Comments

[plorkwort.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see this all the time from the masters and Ph.D. students I support by phone and email for a distance-learning program; most of them are non-traditional students who are already well-established in their field and are coming back for an advanced degree. It's the exception rather than the rule to find someone who can string together a full sentence with punctuation.

[waider.livejournal.com]

I've kinda got mixed views on this. On one hand, I know at least one person who is very smart but tends to abuse english pretty heinously when communicating via email. On the other hand, I have encountered a bunch of mouthbreathers whose english skills match their smarts pretty accurately. Personally, I am for quality (at least in spelling and punctuation) regardless of the medium, to the extent that I will spell and punctuate correctly in SMS messaging and IM. I think I've kinda gotten to the point where I try to keep my own standards up and hope others will follow suit.

Otherwise, fux0r 'em, you know?

[boutell.livejournal.com]

When I was in college the scandal was how much retraining the University had to do and how difficult it was to place out of the first-year English Composition class because they knew you almost certainly needed it.

Now the scandal is that these people graduated from college and still can't write.

Zzzzzz.

Personally I think writing well is always worth it. Always, always, always. Not to be confused with the judicious use of locally acceptable slang, wh1ch 1s t3h r0xx0r, y0.

[jwgh]

Here's an excerpt (with certain identifying marks removed) from an email a member of the sales staff sent to all staff a few years ago. (Actually, you may have seen this already, since I think I sent it to the FROST-BOB mailing list at the time.) The interesting thing about it is that the salesperson appears to have actually taken some pains with the letter, going as far as to run a spellchecker on it, which I can tell you was something that this particular individual was not in the habit of doing. (They're all real words! I swear!)

Dear Staff,

I would like to share an experience in which I had with the CCRA Canadian Customs/Regency Agency this past week in Ottawa, Canada.

I initially went to this customer site with the understanding that they have a need to [REDACTED]. Unknown to me once I arrived I was informed that there would be not 25 people, but 45-50. (Big Showing), and in fact it took place at the Prim Ministers Chretien Conference Quarters.

This client had invited all Providences to this meeting to learn and experience the [REDACTED] products and Services. They had two Interrupters as well as a sign language personal on hand. The setup was similar to the octagon shape meeting place of the Pentagon.

I had a chance to mingle with the Prime Minister Chretien, who also attended as well as introduce me to his staff of all invites. It went quite well considering the amount of French was vast in this city.
[and so on]

(whimper)

[pobig.livejournal.com]

If only I had examples as coherent as jwgh's to offer. Half the email I read at work makes me want to burst into tears. My boss does OK, but tends to come across as harsh and peremptory. Personally, I've found that it's almost impossible to be too agonizingly detailed and pedantic when sending technical email to someone in another time zone.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

An excerpt from typical mail sent us by a corporate web service customer:

I re sent testing e mails i guess they all worked because i didnt get returned mail info back. only one that i did get back was for [name redacted] which i told you about. the other thing since i guess they did go through i didnt get a copy of any like i always do.I get copies because i file them away in a folder in case they arent getting mail on there end.

He's one of the worst, but mostly that's due to his quantity of output.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

My students seem to do pretty well with written assignments. Some of them have trouble with vocabulary (I recall an entertaining essay that mentioned the serious "ethnic" issues raised by artificial intelligence) and grammar (verb tenses especially), but that seems to be just because of English not being their first language. I very seldom feel the desire to grab students by the lapels and yell "You fucking IDIOT!!" I hardly ever see instant-messaging abbreviations like "u" and "btw" in submitted student work.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

This is really just a "ME TOO!!!" response, but I am constantly surprised at the emails I get from co-workers. There's one lady in the department I used to work in who cannot complete a sentence without using the wrong word, sometimes completely obscuring her meaning. Verb tenses mean nothing to her. Another lady who was my Word Processing backup was so bad at spelling and grammar the bosses gave her a grade 6 level workbook to practice on, because she was unable to type even a short dictation without multiple errors.


I personally believe that companies promote and/or hire based on lots of factors, none of which is intelligence. At least where I work, they want you dumb, because you will be dependent on them and because they can pull a lot over on you.

[loser-variable.livejournal.com]

"...who loveS excessive punctuation, but has reined..." or better, "...who punctuated excessively, until someone chided..."

Consistent tense. When *will* you lefties learn? ;-)