What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence

New York Times ^ | December 7, 2004 | SAM DILLON

[RadioAstronomer]

Poorly written email drives me crazy at work! LOL

[saveliberty]

How about high school English teachers who decided that they were bored by English grammar (back when they knew it)? Now a kid has to learn English grammar elsewhere. Sometimes the only option a family can afford is to leverage foreign language lessons in school (checking the rep of the teachers to ensure that they are careful to teach grammar). My niece is learning English grammar in her Latin class.

[Huck]

H.L. Mencken was an excellent semicolon user. If folks would read one of his collections, they would learn how to use a semicolon by osmosis, even without being able to explain the rule.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I found the phone to be more effective when there was a need for detailed conversation.

Do you mean you actually reached a live person by telephone?

[kittymyrib]

The days are long gone when we all diagramed sentences in fourth grade. Our high school graduates are grammar free, and it will show throughout their careers. Lazy teachers and students can't fake correct writing.

[Uncle Vlad]

Here's a wonderful book, which everyone should read:

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition.

It's painfully witty and serves as a useful guide to grammar all at once.

[agere_contra]

Syntax is different for differing languages: however it is a coherent logic-encouraging entity in the most powerful languages. After all, German scientists weaned on German syntax and grammar built the sucessful Moon rocket. English academicians weaned on the classics decrypted Enigma and Linear-B. Wheras speakers of Swahili (a deliberately simple flat-tense trade language) have built, umm...

I would just like to add for those un-versed in the English classics: OMFG!! Jane Austen totally ROOLZ!!!!

[dog breath]

In the company I work for, the people higher up the food chain consider their time too valuable to be wasted responding to our messages. They often respond only after a situation has reached critical mass and then berate us for letting things get out of control. I notice also that they often respond with catch phrases and slogans rather then intelligent comment. Perhaps rude behavior is a method of control for some people in corporations.

[Gefreiter]

I've done this myself. Not Latin, but other languages.

There's a series of grammar books, "English Grammar for the Student of [insert language here]", for people who need to learn formal English grammar before they can learn other grammars.

[the invisib1e hand]

It's the Peter Principal. Of course, no one knows what that is, because it was explained in a book.

Corporations present us with additional problems, besides promoting the incompetent to positions of some authority. Corporations employ millions. They routinely subject their employees to personality profiling, indoctrination, dictates regarding the expression of speech and the procurement of medical care -- things no conservative would ever let his government do, but readily give his employer the power to do.

Support small business.

[agere_contra]

Sorry June, I forgot to answer your question.

"On another note, what is a prole??"

Short for either "lumpenproletariat" or "proletariat": terms used by Marx to describe the mass of unthinking people who need the shining light of socialism to guide them.

You can see why "proles" is a perjorative term.

[Gefreiter]

k,
Yes, it shows in college.

When I was in grad school I was a TA for intro history courses. In one class I worked, students had to submit a few paragraphs every Friday discussing, very generally, one of the week's readings.

I was shocked, frankly, at how poor some of those papers were. Most were OK, a few really stellar, but then some were just abysmal. This situation was pretty much the same for all the TAs in my class year.

One in particular I was convinced was ESL; I'd never heard him speak but he could barely spell, let alone construct a reasoned argument. I assumed he was a foreign student and having trouble writing because of it. Turned out he wasn't foreign at all, just a victim of a piss-poor school.

Now, that also begged the question of how he even got into the university, but I leave that for another thread.

[aruanan]

Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.

Email facilitates pre-existing illiteracy or sloth because it's easier to do than to write something on paper and stick it in an envelope, address the envelope, buy and stick a stamp on it, and put it in the mail box. One also doesn't have to wait weeks for a reply. I don't see any reason why an email cannot and should not be written with as much care as a paper document.

[ccmovrwc]

Catch phrases and slogans?

It sounds like we’re singing from the same hymn sheet. Nevertheless, I’m sure the muckety-mucks are just trying to touch base and leverage synergies so you can get on the same page and make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. That way, you can view it from thirty thousand feet to see the big picture and keep ahead of the game. Of course, once you get all your ducks in a row, you may also need to peel the onion to see what is coming down the pike. Sometimes there are issues that need to be put on the front burner, too, to help shorten the launch curve. You really have to think outside the box in today’s corporate world. After all, it’s important to hit the ground running so you can get more bang for your buck.

If you’d prefer, we can have a sidebar or table this for later. :)

[Gefreiter]

CW,
And this problem of sloppy writing is not limited to internal company messages. It shows in advertising too.

The latest one to really frost me is...Radio Shack? Circuit City? "You've got questions. We've got answers". Fowler might say it's OK, but the word "got" just bugs me; it's totally unnecessary there.

Or, how many times have you read a description of a company, or a "mission statement" (a horrible phrase), and come away with no clue about what the company actually does?

Or, how the heck did we get anything done before all these companies sprouted up to "provide solutions"?!

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Clausery:
it has a subject and a verb!

Phrasery:
going at it the hard way, with no main verb or subject!

Dependent clausery:
Which you discover,
Because it needs more
If something is missing,

I did this too many years. I can correct all the grammar in a long work and have no idea of what it says.

All your commas are belong to us!

[Aquinasfan]

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy,"

No, but going forward they want to expedite the aquisition of human resources with the requisite skill set which would enable said persons to produce on an ongoing basis quality communications, 24/7.

[SuziQ]

I think a lot of younger workers are used to the 'Instant Messaging' way of writing. I'd read somewhere last year, that teachers are having to remind their students that the abbreviations used online don't work in essays for school.

[Gefreiter]

c,
I can smell what you're steppin' in. You also might want to run that up the flagpole once you get some metrics to help put on the brakes. Unless you want to rob Peter to pay Paul, and fall back just to core competencies, you'll have to push the envelope or the whole food chain is going to come down on you.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Maybe a little Hemmingway might help - forget Tolstoy!