QuickTake: Poor Writing Costs Taxpayers Millions
Direct cost of poor writing: $250,000,000 spent on remedial writing instruction.
Indirect cost of poor writing: not easily measurable, but undoubtedly quite high.
Hidden cost?
Another hidden cost is that good ideas may never see the light of day.
"I see that all the time in writing and political speaking," Huckabee said. "There are some really bright people who can't communicate and as a result their ideas probably aren't given the attention they deserve."
Magnitude of the problem:
While two-thirds of companies surveyed in the 2004 report said writing was an important responsibility for workers, 100 percent of the 49 states responding to the anonymous survey said it was. More than 75 percent said they take writing skills into account when hiring.
An economy functions more efficiently when its labor force can read well and write clearly. Encouraging students to develop their writing skills is something that any economics instructor can do.
More information will be found at this web site.
posted by Ronald M. Ayers at 10:46 AM
1 Comments:
Many anthropologists today are studying the effects technology (e.g., the Internet) has on written language. What they've found is that less and less people are able to write clearly, and most cannot even write in script.
The Internet's growth in the past decade has been astounding, but many researchers agree that increased dependence on electronic writing encourages people to become lazy in their grammar and syntax (e.g., improper spelling, misuse of punctuation, sentence order confusion, etc.).
Hopefully colleges, universities, and business will address this problem in the future.
6:35 AM
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