I'm not talking about injecting voice into prose; I'm talking about spelling things correctly, using correct verb tenses, and having enough of a vocabulary to not misuse common words. These are professionals, people with important jobs, community residents who want to get their voices out there. These are PIOs for nationally-affiliated organizations.
Has it always been this way? Have I just been shielded from it by not working in large organizations or seeing dozens of horrendous news releases every week?
Japanophiles like to make fun of Engrish, and to haughtily suggest that in this 21st century, Japanese companies could surely hire a native speaker to write their copy.
But I wonder if a native speaker would truly be any better.
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2 comments:
It's been a funny situation for me in that English is actually my second language, I spent a could years in ESL, and yet somehow I wound up with much better English skills than most native speakers. I tend to attribute it towards the zealous manner in which I studied English in the hopes of catching up to my peers, never realizing that they were doing their best not to learn it.
Then there's this whole Internet subculture of acronyms, abbreviations, and intentional misspellings...
I think breaking the rules is perfectly fine...as long as you know them in the first place.
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