I don’t know if this is still a problem, but I remember reading that some decades back, a number of companies had problems with people writing absolutely unusable emails.
The problem, as I recall it being presented, was that historically the norm had that you’d have a secretary take dictation. That secretary was basically a professional writer, and would clean up all the memos and whatever that went out.
But at some point, companies generally decided that people should just be emailing each other directly. Now you weren’t dictating to a secretary. You were typing an email yourself. The problem is that this meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who had relied on secretaries to clean things up for many years who had had no practice and were suddenly writing their own material…and it was horrendous.
I’d guess that that was probably some twenty years ago now, at least, so maybe the problem has aged out.
I don’t know if this is still a problem, but I remember reading that some decades back, a number of companies had problems with people writing absolutely unusable emails.
The problem, as I recall it being presented, was that historically the norm had that you’d have a secretary take dictation. That secretary was basically a professional writer, and would clean up all the memos and whatever that went out.
But at some point, companies generally decided that people should just be emailing each other directly. Now you weren’t dictating to a secretary. You were typing an email yourself. The problem is that this meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who had relied on secretaries to clean things up for many years who had had no practice and were suddenly writing their own material…and it was horrendous.
I’d guess that that was probably some twenty years ago now, at least, so maybe the problem has aged out.
Sadly, it has not gotten better. It is something I actively have to train people when they join our company.