to say NO to a work placement because of poor grammar?

[oneofsuesylvesterscheerios]

I work in a school and I oversee trainee teachers and also undergraduates who are looking for work placements in school on a temporary basis.

I am getting increasingly cheesed off with students who are supposedly at degree level emailing me with requests in language that is tantamount to text-speak, in sentences so poorly-constructed that they barely make sense.

The latest was over-familiar ('Hi XXX' - even though she'd never met me before), with lower-case 'I' throughout and the grammar was appalling. I'd never let my own students write to anyone in this way if they were writing to ask for a work placement. What's happened that some folk that this is acceptable?

I've just written back to say 'no' and I've told her why (politely).

YADNBU. Good on you for telling her why, might make her more successful next time.

Good point about maybe finding out a bit more about the candidate's background. I had another request recently from a gril who was very personable in her email; her experience was impressive, she was very enthusiastic and her request was detailed enough to show she would be potenially the right personality to be in school... but her spelling was awful.

I write back to her saying we might consider her request but that her spelling was letting her application down. She emailed me back straight away and apologised, and explained she's been diagnosed as being dyslexic quite late in her school career. She apologised for not having had her email checked by someone else before she sent it and promised she'd do this in the future. Now that I don't mind at all... she'll obviously struggle with written communication in her life but she's willing to ask for help when she needs it.

YANBU

I work in a Uni and we get txtspeak all the time. In ESSAYS for fucks sake.

I'm heartened by the fact that no one so far thinks you are being unreasonable. Well done for sticking to your standards, if this sort of thing isn't being taught in schools all communication will eventually descend to the lowest level.

I agree with the email being a letter without an envelope and in the first instance for a formal email I would use a Dear format.

Totally agree with what you said, as a teacher as well as a pedant.

Hi in email is fine though, IMO.

Having just had to recruit some one new to the library team, I can now declare that poor English is the recruiters' dream :) We had "good written and spoken English" as one of the criteria on the job description, so all them what can't spell or whose grammer were tofee never stood a chance - lord only kno what we would of done if they all had presentable CV's. Even after dumping the illiterate we had far to many what could do the job in there sleep. Depressing having to give feedback to perfectly good candidates about why they didn't get the job.

I bin/delete them.

After checking their shoe-wear, my old Headteacher used to say in interview, "How do you spell....? Only you've not spelt it correctly in your application letter."

If you don't tell them, they won't know.

I would always use 'Dear' in an email to someone I didn't know - it's just like a letter and you can't guarantee that the person won't have a secretary who prints out emails, so it may come to them in the same form as a print letter anyway.

YANBU

If you can't get the basics of grammar and writing a proper letter, then who are you ever going to get the hard things correct.

To be honest, it would have been more appropriate to write a more formal letter in a word document and send it as an email attachment. That it was I did when I made job / placement enquiries via email when I was that age. People seem to have forgotten that you can attach a word doc to an email and it looks better to send a letter.

I agree that a formal email should be written to the same standard as a letter. I get a lot of speculative job applications and automatically bin those with shoddy grammar and typos.

However, my pet hate is when someone adresses a letter/email to me as Dear Mrs Tidy Bush.

NO! NO! NO! It's Dear Mrs Bush or Dear Tidy (e.g.if they have already spoken to me and I have invited them to drop me a line).

I don't get it with email, as don't you have to make a bit of an effort to get it wrong? My email auto-corrects capitalization and spell checks before I send.

If it's work emails to clients I know I kind of vacilliate with how to start them (best to send them in the morning then I can stary with Good Morning!), but even in email exchanges I can't just send a one liner if it's out to a client, I still have to start it with at least "Hi x" and always finish with Best Regards, Lucky (although that's in my signature so again applied automatically). If it's first contact then it's ALWAYS Dear X. I'd rather they thought "oooh that's a bit formal" than "how rude!".

I'm less forgiving of crappy spelling in anything typed as if they can't even be bothered to use spell check then they blatently don't care.

The lower case i really pisses me off in formal correspondence.

It just makes the sender look THICK.

YANBU - it clearly spells out the kind of person IMO.

Similar thing - I do skills intereviews for my company, first round is by phone.

If my candidates cant answer the phone and annouce their name then they are a no immediately for me. I usually get a "ello" if I'm lucky. They are expecting the call, its prearranged so its no suprise who is calling. Do these people have no idea about professional conduct?

I do give them a job if they can spell better than me though

YANBU - and unlike SueSylvester I don't have an issue with your grammar.

I routinely reject CVs with poor grammar and yet my staff are not responsible for teaching others.

YANBU although I wouldn't necessarily have written someone off for the "Hi" in an email (although it would have made my hackles rise!) as there isn't really an "agreed" format for email in the same way as there is for letters.

When it comes to poor grammar, spelling, little "i" and text-speak though, no way Hose, it just gr8ts {grin}