The loss of communications, in communications

I was working on a project recently with a colleague and was shocked at some of the writing I was seeing going on. While we all understand and appreciate the need to be proficient in all of the social media aspects that are growing rapidly it is amazing how the long term impacts of these changes in our profession is that we are all becoming weaker. Just as the fast food culture tends to lead to obesity, the style of social media writing leads to weaker writing and communication skills throughout the organization.

Where as in the past communications professional generally learned to write from the same base, be it AP Style or what ever, most communications professionals wrote in the same style and learned to write the same way. This was then shared with new entries into the field and while one could argue about the merits of the AP style, there was a certain standardization which led to a level of professionalism.

Now with the influx of social media into the mix, writing skills have declined sharply and we may be facing a long term crisis in communications. For one thing, the art and skill of crafting a story and turning that into a message is eroding faster than an ocean facing beach. One of the downside of stressing Twitter over traditional writing is that we are telling snippets and not delivering messages. A brief character blurb is often not enough to tell a complete story.

Also, as we all know, proper grammar is simply not being taught. I am thinking of asking for future writing and editing assignments to offer me bonuses on the edits I make. If I were to get a dollar for every split infinitive, missing comma or my own personal favorite the propositional adverb, I could be making something in the low seven figures. I would add to this the over reliance on spell check and the lack of a dictionary in offices. Recently I had to show someone how to look something up in a dictionary and was astounded that they didn't know how to use it.

The other area of failure in communications arises from the managers in both agencies and in the corporate world. More often than not, edits to a document are simply marked and e-mailed back. There are no interactions between manager and employee and no understanding is shared in all too many cases. More often than not the document is hacked to death to make it seem to fit the managers view of the message and not only is no lesson learned, but the message is weakened because the staff member will not wish to challenge the boss.

While I am not going to say social media lacks importance and its role should be lessened, I do believe we need to strengthen the training of staff and managers in how to work to craft stronger messages. This means training, time commitment and the desire to make a uniform commitment to excellence. These are areas where, sadly, we as communications professional are lacking and can improve both easily and quickly.