If we set the bar low, there we will go

“Where are tomorrow’s writers going to come from?” asks Natalie Canavor, business writer, author and presenter, in her November 2010 CW Bulletin article, “The Texting Tide: Is the writing on the wall for writing?” CW Bulletin is the e-newsletter supplement to Communication World magazine published by the International Association of Business Communicators.

Canavor says managers in every industry complain that “the schools aren’t teaching the kids to write, and they’re coming to us totally unequipped.”

She continues, “… as a department head at a major company recently told me, very few of his communication specialists can write, and those who can are burdened by the need to intensively edit the others’ work, or do it themselves.”

Scary stuff. Seems to me part of the problem lies with instructors beginning at the grade school and high school levels; I’ve encountered many who are far from good writers. So how can we possibly expect them to teach the fundamentals, model good writing or identify how their young writers need to improve? By the time these students get to college, their skills are so far underdeveloped, their professors throw up their hands in utter frustration.

Another part of the problem lies with self-proclaimed “professional communicators,” many of whom have risen to the helm of corporate communications departments more for their management skills and get-it-done abilities, less for their capacity to communicate clearly. What’s more, these pseudo-communicators go on to hire poor writers – either because they’re OK with mediocrity or can’t tell the difference between what’s good and bad anyway.

If we set the bar low, there we will go.

Johnny Can’t Write. It’s time for the communications industry and its professional associations to take a stand, raise awareness and work together to find practical ways to turn this tide – before it’s too late. Otherwise, we can expect our workplaces of the future to be mired in millions of miserable, mutual miscommunications, misperceptions and misunderstandings.

Published on Nov. 4, 2010