Or is the state of written communication really diabolical?

[drcrab]

We received a letter from DS' nursery which essentially made us panic and rather angry (about the 15 hours free we get as he's over 3 years old). Anyway to cut long story short, DH went into nursery this morning and before he could even open his mouth to ask the many questions racing through our minds, the manager admitted the letter was poorly written and didn't make sense and clarified immediately the situation. Which made us feel happy. Great.

Apparently the letter was written by head office and she was intending to write a cover letter to explain but didn't get round.

My point is: shouldn't we be worried about the state of English in organizations these days?? It's ridiculous that these letters are supposedly written by educated people employed specifically to communicate information to the public and yet they can screw it up majorly!

The CBI was right about the quality of education we are offering... School leavers who can't write coherently? Or worse... Graduates who can't?

Butterbur, Butterbur, there's an office-load of people wetting themselves over that one here!

Butterbur - hilarious. I'm going to show my DH this thread when he's back.

it's not just about punctuation, spelling and all that though. In my particular case, it was actually the inability to bloody explain the manner in which they are going to award us the 15 hours free/week. It was totally utterly befuddling. And my DH and I spent hours reading it, trying to understand it; a friend about to drop any moment was trying to figure it out too, and got even more worked up.

It's really a crime that people can't bloody express themselves properly and effectively.

Glad to have entertained you - and your office, Andrewofgg. Sadly I didn't make it up myself.

I was a bit and to receive a letter from a TRUST stating 'x has been diagnosed with Asparagus Syndrome'. Obviously a spellcheck error but you think someone would have read it before it went out?

One of DS1's targets at school was to work on correct placement of apostrophe's. I put the target card back in his tray. A few minutes later, I took the card out of his tray and scribbled out the rogue '.

Totally agree. The amount of utter tosh I see at work is astounding. I'm a communications manager and have to frequently re-write jargonistic crap written by very senior directors.

Like kickingking, I'm a primary teacher and absolutely horrified at my younger colleagues. The quality of their spoken and written language is awful and the letters they send out make me shudder. It's just not good enough - they're supposed to be setting an excellent example!

Agree about the written communication. I'm a primary school teacher and some of my younger colleauges really worry me. Marking children's work with comments like "You could of gone into more detail about the domestic life of the Victorian's".

That is utterly appalling!

I would be extremely cross should I ever find out that one of DD's teachers had produced that gem of a comment.

I recall being hauled over the coals by my A-level maths tutor for writing something on the lines of "the value of x increases by a multiple of it's square". It was actually more of a typo than lack of knowledge!

YANBU. I have read many a letter several times as the poor spelling and grammar has rendered them ambiguous at best, sometimes completely nonsense tbh. That is including the official Court report concerning my XH's attempts to get dd.

I really did see that comment in a child's History book.

I am at the targets card about correct placement of apostrophe's. OMG!

And that was from an experienced primary school teacher. I suppose someone else could have typed it for her but it was still crap. To his credit, when I wrote it out for DS1, he spotted the mistake straight away!

Letter from my landlords last week-

'as yourselfs have been a tenant now for about some time'

WTF?

I'm laughing my head off but at the same time extremely appalled at the state of the language.

anything we can do about that? anyone?