It's not often I find something to agree with on the opinion page of the Melbourne Age, which increasingly resembles a cross between the campus newspapers of my youth and Green Left Weekly, but today was an exception.
The writer makes the point that increased ease of communication is paradoxically leading to a decline in the basic skills of written communication. I see this all the time at work, where it's not uncommon for me to receive an email enquiry which is so garbled, ungrammatical and a-syntactical as to be literally incomprehensible. I often have to write back and say, as politely as possible, What the hell are you asking me? And these emails usually come from people who went through school before the education system fell apart, and who often are holding down professional jobs.
Unfortunately I'm not in the lucky position of the person who told me he automatically deletes unread any email that begins with 'Hi' or ends in 'cheers'.
My own suspicion is that the real problem is simple selfishness, which we used to try to minimize by teaching people manners. Why bother to write legibly? If someone can't read you, that's their problem. You know your own phone number, so of course you're going to gabble it at top speed when leaving a message on my phone. So I have to play the tape three or four times over to reconstruct the message, like some CIA agent manning a wiretap operation.
Somewhat related is the near-extinction of the salutation 'Dear...' I suspect that most modern illiterates consider this either overly familiar or effeminate.
Cheers!
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1 comment:
Dear Favorite Curmudgeon,
Yes, there sometimes seems to be an increasing lack of civility in daily affairs. Perhaps, rather than evidence of a decline in care and consideration for others, this may be simply the dissipation of a more formal style, or manner.
From my experience on reference desks over the past, hmm, many years, I sense no increase in the levels of hostility and boorishness in the general population.
The traditional salutation "Dear" is still used as much as it ever was - in letters.
With email, the equally meaningless salutation "Hi" is more conversational as befits the medium, which is simply less formal and less structured.
For good and ill, email certainly takes less effort than writing a letter, and, yes, this probably encourages using less effort in composition and expression.
But, having seen a sizable sample of what gets lobbed into the Redmond Barry Team in-tray, I know that SLV's clients are frequently inarticulate and incoherent using paper, typewriter, pen and pencil.
No matter what era, there are going to be people who couldn't construct a sentence to save their souls - and will insist on engaging with institutions like libraries.
The person who told you he automatically deletes unread any email that begins with 'Hi' or ends in 'cheers' is certainly bu..., ah, exaggerating. He would be deleting a very high proportion of his emails, and, if he scrolled down the message far enough to see that it ended in cheers, then he would have virtually read it anyway.
Now that the Learning 2.0 course has been run, may I respectfully suggest that you continue to post to your blog, including graphics, whenever the spirit moves you.
Persistent rumours indicate that you've gathered a substantial following.
Sincerely,
Elmo
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