People have a compulsive need to respond quickly to email. Keypads in smart phones are small. These two factors are wreaking havoc on written communication.
The 140 character limitation in messaging and Twitter amplifies the problem. Absurdity thrives on the altar of brevity.
A well-composed letter used to be a sign of a good mind. You could make out good schooling and a tough English language teacher from a letter.
Alas, the times have changed.
One spelling error and one grammatical error per sentence is now par for the course, particularly for senior managers. It suggests that the writer is an extremely busy man.
If you are a junior executive then the rules are different. A badly written letter can get you branded as someone with poor documentation skills. That’s not good for someone who has ambitions of scurrying up the corporate ladder.
Our English teacher in school (Mr. PNO, God bless him) whacked us on the knuckles with a ruler, for every error in composition. A mail from the average senior manager would have earned at least five whacks. Most CEO’s would get more.
Can smart phones and tablets take a cue from Mr. PNO? A mild electric shock for every error, perhaps? That could go a long way in fixing the problem.
oh my knuckles
As a communcations professional (who works for nuns no less) I am all about the red pen. We can’t be perfect and catch everything but at least we can try. And I do find that CEO’s are often the worst of the bad writers, which always leads me to a rant about my paycheck. Unfortunately, now that I am texting and e-mailing from my phone frequently, I realize how totally inept I am at the tiny keyboard. I won’t even attempt to correct the messages to friends and family anymore and they have to figure out what I really mean. I guess, in a glass-half-full way, I am contributing to the development of their brains.
I think that I hate auto-text. Or auto-correct. I think we should throw our phones out the window, and communicate like humans.