Posted on 12/07/2004 12:34:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. - R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.
"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Dr. Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, 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. B The problem shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said.
"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."
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.
Here is one from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation based in Palo Alto, Calif.: "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 ... 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'."
The incoherence of that message persuaded the analyst's employers that she needed remedial training.
"The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at another Silicon Valley corporation, Applera, a supplier of equipment for life science research, where most employees have advanced degrees. "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."
Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. The corporations surveyed were in the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, finance, insurance, real estate and service industries, but not in wholesale, retail, agriculture, forestry or fishing, the commission said. Nor did the estimate include spending by government agencies to improve the writing of public servants.
An entire educational industry has developed to offer remedial writing instruction to adults, with hundreds of public and private universities, for-profit schools and freelance teachers offering evening classes as well as workshops, video and online courses in business and technical writing.
Kathy Keenan, a onetime legal proofreader who teaches business writing at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, said she sought to dissuade students from sending business messages in the crude shorthand they learned to tap out on their pagers as teenagers.
"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."
Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries, Ms. Keenan said.
The Sharonview Federal Credit Union in Charlotte, N.C., asked about 15 employees to take a remedial writing course. Angela Tate, a mortgage processor, said the course eventually bolstered her confidence in composing e-mail, which has replaced much work she previously did by phone, but it was a daunting experience, since she had been out of school for years. "It was a challenge all the way through," Ms. Tate said.
Even C.E.O.'s need writing help, said Roger S. Peterson, a freelance writer in Rocklin, Calif., who frequently coaches executives. "Many of these guys write in inflated language that desperately needs a laxative," Mr. Peterson said, and not a few are defensive. "They're in denial, and who's going to argue with the boss?"
But some realize their shortcomings and pay Mr. Peterson to help them improve. Don Morrison, a onetime auditor at Deloitte & Touche who has built a successful consulting business, is among them.
"I was too wordy," Mr. Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points. Finally Roger threatened to rip the exclamation key off my keyboard."
Exclamation points were an issue when Linda Landis Andrews, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, led a workshop in May for midcareer executives at an automotive corporation based in the Midwest. Their exasperated supervisor had insisted that the men improve their writing.
"I get a memo from them and cannot figure out what they're trying to say," the supervisor wrote Ms. Andrews.
When at her request the executives produced letters they had written to a supplier who had failed to deliver parts on time, she was horrified to see that tone-deaf writing had turned a minor business snarl into a corporate confrontation moving toward litigation.
"They had allowed a hostile tone to creep into the letters," she said. "They didn't seem to understand that those letters were just toxic."
"People think that throwing multiple exclamation points into a business letter will make their point forcefully," Ms. Andrews said. "I tell them they're allowed two exclamation points in their whole life."
Not everyone agrees. Kaitlin Duck Sherwood of San Francisco, author of a popular how-to manual on effective e-mail, argued in an interview that exclamation points could help convey intonation, thereby avoiding confusion in some e-mail.
"If you want to indicate stronger emphasis, use all capital letters and toss in some extra exclamation points," Ms. Sherwood advises in her guide, available at www.webfoot.com, where she offers a vivid example:
">Should I boost the power on the thrombo?
"NO!!!! If you turn it up to eleven, you'll overheat the motors, and IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!"
Dr. Hogan, who founded his online Business Writing Center a decade ago after years of teaching composition at Illinois State University here, says that the use of multiple exclamation points and other nonstandard punctuation like the :-) symbol, are fine for personal e-mail but that companies have erred by allowing experimental writing devices to flood into business writing.
He scrolled through his computer, calling up examples of incoherent correspondence sent to him by prospective students.
"E-mails - that are received from Jim and I are not either getting open or not being responded to," the purchasing manager at a construction company in Virginia wrote in one memorandum that Dr. Hogan called to his screen. "I wanted to let everyone know that when Jim and I are sending out e-mails (example- who is to be picking up parcels) I am wanting for who ever the e-mail goes to to respond back to the e-mail. Its important that Jim and I knows that the person, intended, had read the e-mail. This gives an acknowledgment that the task is being completed. I am asking for a simple little 2 sec. Note that says "ok", "I got it", or Alright."
The construction company's human resources director forwarded the memorandum to Dr. Hogan while enrolling the purchasing manager in a writing course.
"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," Dr. Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end."
"Strunk and White", "Fowler", next!
You're not Jar Jar, are you? ;)
I agree. I had a better grasp of English grammar after learning other languages, although I had more success in applying lessons learned from European languages than from Asian.
These books sound useful as each language may apply similar rules or tenses differently. French limits the use of the subjunctive tense with the word "that", while English affords the subjunctive a greater range.
'Idjits' works for me. ;o)
YEAH!! What he said! ;o)
I once received an email from a guy making more money than I was at the time. Along with many other misspellings, he spelled supercede, "sooperseed". I am not making this up.
The worst (i.e., hardest to interpret) writing I have ever read was written by people with Ph.Ds in English. They can put legal writing to shame any day when they want to.
And these are the people teaching or supervising the teaching of college composition courses.
Of course, I wasn't like that at all when I taught comp - not me, never nope! Of course, I was the master of 90 word sentences there for awhile, though. Comes from reading way too much 18th and 19th century writing, where a paragraph easily and often runs over one page.
Of course. And this dude gets $20k per day to train employees to be a-holes.
We're in the wrong business.
I like that. :)
We love Jane Austen in hour home as well! We have a dog named Emma, a cat named Mr. Knightley, and our fish is named Frank Churchill!
It's funny how corpocrap is the same everywhere. I guess that explains the success of all the office-parody TV commercials. I especially like the Fedex commercial with the three guys dancing to "Hey baby baaaaybee" on the boombox. Genius 8-)
LOL! I like it!
Heh...maybe only another musician would understand naming instruments, but I named my first good guitar Mr. Darcy...
I really need to reread Emma! That's one of my favorite of her books, though I was sold on Mr. Knightly so early on that I really wanted to smack Emma for being such an idiot for so long!
The serial numbers that they have listed on their Packing slip do not match completely to the actual serial numbers on the boxes themselves and inside on the machine label. The serial numbers 0404035 thru 0404039 are not listed on the XXX 120 packing slip. The packing slip listed 0404050 thru 0404054 serial numbers on the packing slip which we have not received as XXX 120 on this receiving.
The other problem is the month of manufacture which they did not supply on the boxes or the labels this time, as they have done in the pass lots. I inspected XXX 120 and open one completely to verify this and also inspected that all parts were there and that no damaged had occurred from shipping etc..
I have listed in the serial number data base the date of receipt so we will know what lot they are from for control purposes.
Scarry.
You mean, the thread Nannies are RIGHT?
This article is a feast for thread Nannies everywhere. We will not be silenced! (Thus using one of my two allotted exclamation points in this life. Sigh.)
I have an ear for languages. I can often spot someone who learned English as a second language, by the syntax they use.
I haven't noticed any awkwardness in your posts, and I am impressed with your skill. ;-D
"Prole" is shorthand for "proletarian."
I recently got a request from an auditor in our company for disaster recovery documentation for one of our mainframe accounts. This was in response to the Sarbanes/Oxley (sp?) legislation (may they burn in that special hell reserved for idiots) and is required under penalty of death. As is the case with most IT auditors they know nothing about the systems that they are auditing but have a few patented phrases that they hope will get results and cover up their abysmal ignorance.
After reading the email three times I finally realized that I had now idea what this person was saying. She was trying really hard to sound "official" but was only sounding incomprehensible. I sent the email to my management asking them if they could please tell me what the h*ll she was saying. They had to get an interpreter from another department that had dealt with her before to translate because they didn't want to shame her by asking straight out what she meant.
This isn't an isolated incident, it occurs in every organization, in all departments. Why do people want to sound like machines? What's the point?
News copy is usually worse than ad copy.
I can understand that high school students do not yet have the writing experience to truly craft a great essay but the lack of basic grammar skills was scary.
I do a lot of writing during my workday and I take pride in my writing skills. I write everything as if someone will be examining what I write closely and will be making assumptions about my intelligence based on it. In fact, someone will be.
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