one of my new responsibilities around the office includes reading and prioritizing consultation requests, and I'm finding myself disturbed at the number of people who are seemingly incapable of drafting a lucid, easily comprehensible letter.
here's a sort of generic template to give you an idea of the severity of the situation:
"Dear so-and-sos,
I was writing this letter from my pet sunny she is 9month old and very sick also she has obedence problem ,how can I stop her bad behaving and to be the master to!
I now you can help us and our city is nice you should visit it even tho I now you only work from home,
please help!
Magnolia Chutneysauce
CEO of A Big Fancypants Management Firm
email@somethingcorporate.com
ps, i loved youre show"
et cetera.
I read them in short bursts, because that's all I'm mentally equipped to handle. I find that although I've never had an interest in education as a profession, the letters stir in me an urge to dive into the public school system and attack the problem at its roots.
Sesame Street had a character whose sole purpose it was to coach children on how to count backwards. can you remember how difficult it was to do that, having just learned how to do it properly forward? it took me ages to get it right.
try it now.
most people don't have to give it a second thought. you could probably just as easily count backwards from one million two-hundred thousand four hundred and thirty two as you could from ten. I suppose I feel that way about basic English skills. you pour that foundation in early primary school, and you write your lessons in the wet cement, and they dry there. and in theory, that foundation should be as solid today as it ever was. I'm not saying that everyone should instinctively know all of the sometimes vague and ambiguous ins and outs of semicolon usage, or what a gerund is - I leave that sort of thing to the freaks who carry around battered copies of elements of style in their back pockets (I DON'T DO THAT STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY) - and I certainly make allowances for educational opportunities afforded and learning disabilities and such, but a basic, coherent sentence should flow from you easily at this point. nouns, verbs, adjectives, subject and predicate, periods, commas, question marks. like counting up and down from ten.
it breaks my heart to read some of the letters we get. I am simultaneously disheartened and reassured that pen pal letters from elementary school students are sometimes more orderly and articulate than these consultation requests from businessmen and women printed on shiny and professional company letterhead. at the very least it may mean that the problem is on its way out, and that the solution may be somewhere happily finger painting, dreaming of being an astronaut or the president of the united states.
here's a sort of generic template to give you an idea of the severity of the situation:
"Dear so-and-sos,
I was writing this letter from my pet sunny she is 9month old and very sick also she has obedence problem ,how can I stop her bad behaving and to be the master to!
I now you can help us and our city is nice you should visit it even tho I now you only work from home,
please help!
Magnolia Chutneysauce
CEO of A Big Fancypants Management Firm
email@somethingcorporate.com
ps, i loved youre show"
et cetera.
I read them in short bursts, because that's all I'm mentally equipped to handle. I find that although I've never had an interest in education as a profession, the letters stir in me an urge to dive into the public school system and attack the problem at its roots.
Sesame Street had a character whose sole purpose it was to coach children on how to count backwards. can you remember how difficult it was to do that, having just learned how to do it properly forward? it took me ages to get it right.
try it now.
most people don't have to give it a second thought. you could probably just as easily count backwards from one million two-hundred thousand four hundred and thirty two as you could from ten. I suppose I feel that way about basic English skills. you pour that foundation in early primary school, and you write your lessons in the wet cement, and they dry there. and in theory, that foundation should be as solid today as it ever was. I'm not saying that everyone should instinctively know all of the sometimes vague and ambiguous ins and outs of semicolon usage, or what a gerund is - I leave that sort of thing to the freaks who carry around battered copies of elements of style in their back pockets (I DON'T DO THAT STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT WAY) - and I certainly make allowances for educational opportunities afforded and learning disabilities and such, but a basic, coherent sentence should flow from you easily at this point. nouns, verbs, adjectives, subject and predicate, periods, commas, question marks. like counting up and down from ten.
it breaks my heart to read some of the letters we get. I am simultaneously disheartened and reassured that pen pal letters from elementary school students are sometimes more orderly and articulate than these consultation requests from businessmen and women printed on shiny and professional company letterhead. at the very least it may mean that the problem is on its way out, and that the solution may be somewhere happily finger painting, dreaming of being an astronaut or the president of the united states.
frontline99:
Join the club. Sometimes I feel as if I should just give up and start writing all my letters in l33k speak!!!!1
tsunami:
Thank you for the comment 