Its only words....

I came across this news article yesterday. Brazil has setup a Grammar hotline. You can now dial in - ask your doubts and experts will answer. The reason they say is that 'Brazilians are sensitive about making grammatical errors, which are often associated with a lack of education.'

Well, I do not think that grammatical errors imply a lack of education. Neither do I believe that proficiency in a language is a pre-requisite for success. Take the example of Indians like me. Most of us are not native English speakers. We are invariably bi-lingual if not tri-lingual or even multi-lingual. I can safely claim that I am proficient in English and can speak/write/read - Hindi and Tamil and can speak and understand Kannada and a bit of Bengali and can understand a bit of Gujarati. And almost all Indians I know are multi-lingual. So when we talk, we switch between two or even three languages, often in the same sentence. The rules of grammar are different in each of these languages. Hence we aren't often grammatically right when we speak. But hey, as long as we get the message across, it is fine, right? May be.

So what about when we write? We don't write in three languages. We do so in only one. Writing doesn't demand instantaneous reaction or spontaneous expression. In fact it gives us enough time to proof read for errors, if any. So then, are we justified in being a little more critical of errors when they occur in writing?

I think the discussion is not as simple as right vs. wrong or justified vs. unjustified, I would like to view the question in the broader context. Why is writing and writing well so important? Why do I and many others place a premium on the written word?

In this age of complexity and high noise, the ability to express our thoughts and ideas in a simple and cogent manner is a skill that is very scarce. Spoken words suffer from transmission loss. Our writing has the ability to travel both geographically and across time. Putting our thoughts down on paper, many a times, helps ourselves get clearer about the topic. As we write, we are often forced to think beyond gut reactions. We are forced to differentiate and discern between judgments /biases and facts and thus and many a times we re-evaluate our own points of view. Writing necessitates us to understand who our reader or audience is, expect or anticipate their questions and answer them in advance. This definitely develops our own intellectual faculties and many a times signals maturity of our thought process. We slowly but surely learn to appreciate nuances and subtexts better.

Effective writing is what I refer to as the ability to write well. I would in fact argue that our readers are investing their time to read and interpret what we are trying to say. So in a sense, we owe it to our readers to invest our own time, to enable easy comprehension. Not all of us are gifted with linguistic skills to write lyrically or poetically, but in this day and age we all have access to spell check and grammar-check tools. When we make the effort to spell check and grammar-proof our writing, we are in fact telling the reader that we appreciate and value his or her time. It signals that that we pay attention even to the smallest of details.

In professional context, I don't have to over emphasize the value of the written word. We are as good as our ideas and our ideas are worthwhile only if the receiver gets what we are trying to say. Our managers and business leaders have little time, so effective communication is of paramount importance. What we need to realise is that in today's electronic world, our written word travels before us. It builds a mental image and influences the perception of the writer in the reader's mind. And why wouldn’t we want to leave a positive impression?

Increasingly, we are concluding business deals via mails and documents alone, without interacting even once personally or over telephone with the other party. In such cases, it is crucial that we take effort to communicate effectively, so that we may influence the deal positively. I would even reckon that if we write well, with attention to details by dotting all the i's and crossing the t’s, our client or manager or business partner could very well believe that we would be as meticulous about our work/projects as we are about our written note.

Now, we write in different contexts. An email, a chat conversation, a personal invitation or a thank you note and so on. We don't necessarily have content that is intellectually heavy that needs to be thought through, simplified, communicated effectively all the time. I am sure our friends and acquaintances understand our message when we communicate using short forms or even non-grammatical terms. They could only care less about spellings, grammar, framework, thought process etc. So do we need to spell check, grammar-proof our writing even for a simple chat conversation? I am biased to say yes. It is my very personal point of view that we should make every effort to write well. After all, our friends are still investing time and effort and by taking pains to enable easy comprehension, we are only appreciative of their effort. Also, if we want to make a habit of writing well, why exclude certain conversations/ interactions. Excellence is after all achieved only when best practices become a habit. I would also contend that our friends are the best people to hone our grammar and spelling skills with. We are, after all most receptive to their criticism.

Finally, I would like to leave you with a cheeky note. When God gave the Ten Commandments, he wrote them / got Moses to write them down on stones vs. just sermonising. Now, I wonder why.