Speculative applications from job-seeking graduates are always a bit hit and miss. But I think chances of success might be increased if the current crop of students and graduates could word their desires in the correct and proper fashion. Knowing ‘your’ from ‘you're’ would be a start.
I currently have a temporary position as a website content manager for an organisation and in this capacity I have been on the receiving end of emails from those in my age group.
Dearie me - for university educated people still in the throes of learning and writing essays, it is mind-boggling to read emails with simple grammatical errors, an inability to write in a formal tone and, worst of all, an overly generous sprinkling of smiley faces.
I almost feel I should preface this complaint by explaining that, as a languages graduate, I am perhaps more prone to noticing dodgy grammar and poor writing and I apologise for piping up.
Some might say I'm being snooty by bringing this to the attention of readers, but we were all language students of our native tongue at some point. It seems that somewhere along the way educational institutions have stopped noticing and correcting their students' writing habits.
But how are young people going to help their cause and get an entry level position if they cannot demonstrate their learned ability in the first approach they make to a company?
We have the most qualified generation, with more and more people going to university, but we forgot to learn the basics. I don't understand it.
Twitter, Blackberry messenger, social networks at large and the promotion of celebrities who appear on TV unable to speak coherently could be held accountable for bad grammar.
Apostrophes have arguably been among the victims of Twitter's economical, 140-character soapbox platform. Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympics was fronted by presenters who often failed to speak properly.
Meanwhile someone who writes for the student newspaper I used to edit, sent out an email to potential writers asking for articles about the ParaOlympics.
Now that it is easy to communicate with people and to reach out to companies instantaneously, it is also easier to forget that a degree of formality needs to be adopted when writing an email.
Why someone who I do not know would write me an email in such a way that suggests we are comfortable enough to LOL at one another or pull smiley faces at each other is bizarre.
I'm not calling for a 'Dear Sir/Madam' style of correspondence, but I am asking for a little more common sense from the people around me who are clamouring for jobs.
I don't remember anything about learning grammar at school. The idea probably was that we would learn as we went along. I hum and haw over semicolons and I have a funny relationship with parenthesis in general. I know the French rules of grammar better than English because they were drilled into me. As for the active versus passive voice, it is a rule I struggled with in every university essay.
Nevertheless, there isn't enough hesitation and humming over prospective applications by email. There is no control+undo button once an email is sent.
So, graduates unite and let's pause before we send an application and look at the basic grammar involved in full stops and contractions.
Only the lucky few have editors who check things before they are published! Lolz....
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