

Teaching ourselves to communicate. - jmduke
http://www.jmduke.net/blog/writing

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lutusp
This is unfortunately easier said than done. It's clear that written
communication skills are in rapid decline, and it's easy to place a value on
their presence, but stating the problem is much easier than solving it.

Modern young technologists mostly hear words spoken and only rarely read more
than a few hundred words at a sitting, so they regularly choose one word that
sounds like three others and use that word in all cases -- I call this
"homophonitis" and it's deadly. I can't count the number of comments about my
Website I've received that proclaimed, "I like your sight" or "I like your
cite".

Adding to the difficulty is the sentiment that correcting a person's grammar
or spelling is bad behavior, even though correcting a person's computer code
is encouraged. High-quality prose and code are both important to any useful
outcome, but even mentioning one of them is disparaged.

Solutions are obvious: (a) much more time spent practicing high-quality,
bidirectional written communications, (b) much less time spent listening to
words spoken. And (c) abandonment of the unspoken rule that we can't correct
terrible grammar and spelling. But I don't think this will happen.

