December 7, 2004

"People now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen."

The NYT reports on abysmal business memos. What makes this front page news? Haven't business memos always been badly written? ("Whadya Know" has long ridiculed business memos on its "Thanks for the Memos" feature.)

The hook in today's Times piece is that email is making people write badly in new ways. The young can't write business email because they are carrying over the style they developed in text messaging and personal email. Older workers are finding their language skills newly exposed as email replaces the telephone. Things that sounded fine spoken are an embarrassing mess written down.

UPDATE: I just corrected two typos, which, I'm told, were "ironic typos."

No comments: