What
corporate America can't build: A sentence
by Sam Dillon
December 7, 2004 [a day and an article which shall live in infamy]
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 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," 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.
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, 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,"
Tate said.
Even CEOs 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,"
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 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,"
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 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," 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," Sherwood advises in
her guide, available at 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!!"
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 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 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," Hogan said. "It has companies at their
wits' end."
