Writing: A Basic Skill All Graduates Need

This is the fourth and last  in a series of blogs that I have written  in response to a request from Bob Clary, Webucator’s community manager. The series concerns professional and business competencies that recent grads need. The competencies that I am covering are ethics, job search, interpersonal skills, and writing. This blog concerns writing.

It is important to write well, and it is not too late to learn how. In 2013 CNBC reported that one of the chief reasons that firms reject job applicants is poor writing. CNBC adds: “In survey after survey, employers are complaining about job candidates' inability to speak and write clearly.”  USA Today lists Siemens, UPS, BAE Systems, and Loyalty Factor as firms that emphasize writing skill when they hire recent grads. The USA Today article quotes the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher (p. 147), which indicates that 97%  of executives believe that the ability to write clearly and persuasively is “absolutely essential” for a student to be ready for college and a career.  

Nevertheless, in 2003 the College Board’s National Commission on Writing published a report entitled The Neglected R: The Need for a Writing Revolution. The report notes that only about 25% of students at grades 4, 8, and 12 are at the proficient level of writing. That is, most high school grads “cannot produce writing at the high levels of skill, maturity, and sophistication required in a complex, modern economy.” Moreover, Jill Singleton Jackson finds in her 2003 doctoral dissertation at the University of North Texas that a sample of master’s degree students does not write better than high school seniors.

Three steps are helpful to better writing:  (1) practice, (2) learning, and (3) observation.  The steps do not need to be followed in any order; rather, students and graduates should integrate practice with learning.     

Students can practice by writing at least two 200-word letters to editors or posts to blogs each week.  I comment on Forbes , my favorite business publication, and I have my own blog at http:www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com. Having your own blog is an excellent way to practice writing if you post at least two 200-word posts each week.  

The second aspect of practice involves focusing on grammar. Look up grammatical issues online and in textbooks.  When you send a letter or post to a blog, try to perfect your grammar and syntax by referring to grammar books. That leads to learning.  Learn further by reading a few pages about grammar each week.  The Chicago Manual of Style, English Grammar for Dummies, Purdue's Online Writing Lab, and similar books and websites are excellent sources. 

The ambitious student might read a few pages from Strunk and White's classic Elements of Style each week.   The Chicago Manual of Style is available online for $35 for one year.  I also subscribe to the Unabridged Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 

Third, you should read every day. This site posts two lists of great novels (one from critics and one from readers).  Well-written business magazines such as Forbes are also useful reading. The point is to observe how good writers write. 

Common Writing Issues

I grade about 200 student papers per year.  The following are common writing issues with which students grapple.

A. In regards to

 In regards to is wrong.   The following are right:

With regard to,
In regard to,
As regards,
Regarding.

B. Semicolons

Several of my students have been grappling with semicolons. They are simple. They only do three things.  This essay is short and to the point.  Recall that independent clauses can stand as sentences.

Semicolons are used as follows:

(1) To join two independent clauses: I go to class; I learn grammar.

(2) To join lists in which commas are present in each item: To learn, I have traveled to Midwood, Brooklyn; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Los Angeles, California.

(3) To join complicated clauses that include commas: I love to study grammar, my favorite; to do my writing assignments; and to read Hayek's and Hazlitt's books.

  C. "Would" and “could.”

 See  http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/how-use-would  and

http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/presentconditional.html .

Recently, about one third of my students has misused would or could in their papers. I wish that would and could were easy to use. Making them easier is their limited number of uses. If you commit the common uses of would to memory, you can limit yourself to those uses and so refine your English writing. If I were you, I would not overuse the word would.

Here are five common uses of would:

(1) As the past tense of "will": "You said that you would let me drive your Lamborghini today."

(2) To express a polite request: "I would like a Lamborghini please."

(3) To describe a repeated action in the past: "When I was a lad, I would walk nine miles to school each day. After school I would chop wood."

(4) To express an unreal situation: "Owning a Lamborghini would let me drive fast."

(5) To express an unreal conditional: "If I were a millionaire, I would own a Lamborghini."

Would is not used for statements of fact or general truth: "George Washington would be the first president" is incorrect. It is also incorrect to write "Under most human resource systems today pay equity would be permitted." 

"Would" is used for unreal situations; it is also used for situations that are conditioned upon unreal situations or unreal circumstances: I wouldn't do that if I were you.

These are related to the second and third conditional forms.

Zero or present real conditionals are statements of fact,  generality or law. They state what you usually do. They use the present tense: When I attend Professor Langbert's class, I sleep. 

First (real) present conditionals are statements of conditional fact.  They state the condition that makes a real future event possible and a future real event contingent on a present action: If I attend Professor Langbert's class, then I will sleep.

Second (unreal) present conditionals state an unreal or impossible condition to an unreal or impossible situation. They express the present, but the present condition is expressed with the past tense and the contingent event is expressed with would or could. In the second or unreal conditional you use would to express a situation that you don't think will happen: If I never attended Langbert's class, then I would never sleep.

Third conditionals describe an imaginary past and use the past perfect to express the imaginary past condition and would plus the present perfect to express the unreal past situation that would have resulted: If I had not enrolled in Langbert's class, then I would not have slept this semester.

 If you limit your uses of "would" to unreal situations and conditionals, then you will avoid a common writing error.

D.  Avoid unnecessary or extraneous words like very, extremely, totally, and really. Avoid using the first person (in my opinion).  Don’t insert phrases like  I think that… If you didn’t think it, you wouldn’t be writing it.

E.  Check that the verb tense in each paragraph does not change unless you have a specific reason.  

F. If necessary, check the verb tense that you are using against the discussion on English Page: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html .

G. Only words that require capitalization should be capitalized. Check your writing against the capitalization rules on Grammarbook.com: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp .

H. Check your writing to make sure that restrictive phrases and clauses are not preceded or followed by commas and that non-restrictive phrases and clauses are preceded and followed by commas. To understand the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, read these websites: http://gtotd.blogspot.com/2007/08/set-off-non-restrictive-phrases-or.html and http://library.cn.edu/wacn/pdfs/clausetry.pdf  .

Non-restrictive clauses add a little information: George Washington, the first president, rode a white horse.

Restrictive clauses are central to the sentence's meaning: George Washington the first president rode a white horse, but during a parade white horses rode upon George Washington the bridge.

I. Do not use a comma to separate the subject of the sentence from the verb. Do not use a comma to separate a dependent or subordinate clause that ends a sentence unless it contrasts with or contradicts the meaning of the rest of the sentence or is nonrestrictive.    When you inject nonessential remarks into a sentence, enclose them in commas: , in his view, ; , as she remarked, . There should be commas before and after the nonessential or parenthetical remark.

J. Check your sentences for independent clauses, and if two or more are in a sentence, punctuate the linkage or linkages correctly.  An independent clause can be a sentence in its own right. If there is more than one independent clause, then there are four potential options for correct punctuation:

(1) Use a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction. The coordinating conjunctions are FAN BOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

(2)  Use a semicolon.

(3) Use a semicolon followed by a conjunctive adverb or adverbial phrase followed by a comma.

(4) Bite the bullet. Often, the best option is a shorter sentence. Consider breaking the separate independent clauses into separate sentences.

An Example of a run-on sentence, a sentence that lacks proper linkage of independent clauses, is as follows: 

Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie star, he broke box office records and he broke many hearts.

Four alternative potential corrective measures:

1) Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie star, for he broke box office records, and he broke many hearts.

(2)  Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie star; he broke box office records; he broke many hearts.

(3) Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie star; specifically, he broke box office records; also, he broke many hearts.

(4) Rudolph Valentino was a famous movie star. He broke box office records.  He broke many hearts.

As revised, all four are grammatically correct from a technical standpoint. Which is the most effective? I say (4). Yet, students insist on long sentences. One time, I broke one sentence, written by a senior, into six separate sentences.

 K. Compound words

Students grapple with writing compounds. For some compounds there is a single convention, and writing it differently from the convention can be viewed as incorrect writing. For other compounds there is disagreement, and you need to consult a style guide that you use consistently.  For example, mother-in-law is always hyphenated, racetrack is always closed, and post office is always open. Notice that the three ways to handle compound words are hyphenated (part-time), closed (keyboard), and open (real estate, middle class). In other cases the handling of prefixes and suffixes may be controversial, but you can consult a style guide and consistently use the style guide's approach.

In deciding which form to use, the first step is to consult a dictionary. This is true for words with prefixes and suffixes if the prefix or suffix is frequently used. For example, overeater is a closed compound word because Dictionary.com says so (see:  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overeater?s=t)

I usually use the Unabridged Merriam-Webster Dictionary or Dictionary.com, which is available for free on the Internet.  If the word is not in the dictionary, then you need to consult a style guide. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is a widely used style guide that is appropriate for business and academia. I subscribe to it for $35 per year and can access it online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html . I also own the hard copy and, as well, several other style guides. A style guide commonly used in business schools is the American Psychological Association guide.

Happily, CMS's excellent hyphenation table is available for free online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/images/ch07_tab01.pdf . It shows how to handle words with prefixes and suffixes as well as many compounds. For example, a student may wish to write I am an overthinker. The Microsoft spell checker does not accept overthinker, but in the CMS list of words with prefixes it is evident that overthinker rather than over thinker or over-thinker is the right form. This is what the CMS hyphenation table shows:

Over   overmagnified, overshoes, overconscientious

 CMS consistently uses the prefix over with a closed form.

L. Compound Adjectives

If you are unsure of a compound's form, you should look it up in a dictionary, and if it is not in the dictionary, you should consult a style guide that you consistently use.  There is an additional issue: hyphenation of compound adjectives that precede nouns. Note that when compound adjectives follow nouns they are not hyphenated.

 There is a good discussion of compound adjectives at the Kent School of Law website.

Why Jane and Joe College Cannot Write

The Brazilian student said that the bank was under the impression that Brooklyn College would help her learn to write, and they told her to take writing here. They are probably paying her tuition, and they think that we have the capacity to teach skills that they need in their employees.

I have had similar experiences with other students.  In 2006 a senior invited a large insurance company to come to Brooklyn for a Students in Free Enterprise recruiting event.  They agreed to come, but when the student sent them an email, they backed out. They told him that a campus and a faculty that allow students to write like him (his words to me) is not one that they will consider visiting.   This is an EFL, not ESL, student. Often my ESL students are better writers than my EFL students.  I showed you a paper a few weeks ago, John, which you assumed was written by a ESL student but in fact had been written by an EFL student.  My two best writers this semester are ESL students.

John, Diane Ravitch’s book Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform outlines a history in which  education experts have turned a simple process of learning to write into a mystical belief system.  Studies are done and educators procure large grants to solve an imaginary problem.  Educators will do everything, including sitting on the floor with the students, except the hard work of teaching grammar and grading papers.

The result is our students’ writing, which is in part the fault of progressive education theories that fetishize ignorance about grammar and the multiplication tables and which is in part due to teachers’ and professors’ laziness about grading writing, which Benno Schmidt mentioned at an American Council of Trustees and Alumni colloquium last April.  We don’t need to turn writing into a philosophical exercise.  There are a number of significant components of the problem: The students aren’t taught the rules; they aren’t given enough practice; they aren’t motivated; they don’t read.  The solution needs to address all of those concerns, including grammar.  

Our students don’t read enough, but do our faculty assign difficult readings that challenge them, or do they use easy textbooks acceptable to the AACSB’s standardized quality assurance process?  Our students don’t write enough, either.  This is what a student wrote in an online discussion about a New York Times article about the failure of business schools:

A part that I found interesting was when Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that business majors had the weakest gains during the first two years of college on a national test of writing and reasoning skills. I believe this statement is 100% accurate. This is my second semester at Brooklyn College and i have only written 2 papers and i will accrued 25 credits by the end of this semesters, with one of those papers being from this class. Some of the classes that are taken as part of your major for business do not necessarily require you to write papers, and with it being like that we will tend to forgot certain grammatical rules. College standards have dropped but yet there is nothing being done about it from what i see. One of the problems i find is professor who teach the same course who teach two completely different ways one can be extremely easy and the other extremely difficult and it shouldn't be like that.

Lack of grammatical knowledge is a component. If the students had been repeatedly taught grammar, and if they continued to make errors like these, then your point that grammar is the least of the problems might have traction.   The reverse is true: Few of them have been taught grammar, and their writing is dismal.  The chief exceptions are ESL students who have been well trained in English grammar and students who have received grammatical instruction at home because their parents are knowledgeable enough to teach them.  

John, your recommendation is more of the same: Not teaching grammar in the public schools and at Kingsborough Community has failed for 14 years, so let’s continue to not to teach it.  As for your wife’s experiences, my 10 years of business experience were in the New York region, at Johnson and Johnson and Inco (now Vale).  My father-in-law, who cofounded an S&P Small Cap 600-listed firm with 5,000 Chinese employees, read a research report by one of my students (who works at a large money center bank) and said that the young man is illiterate, and he wouldn’t consider his investment recommendations because of it. The young man was one of my brightest students and an EFL student.

The problem goes for both EFL and ESL students. Both groups' educations are byproducts of a dismal, progressive education-based system whose primary fixations have been on failed theories and easy lifestyles for teachers and professors.

The Wizard of Oz and the Business School

Much has been made about fraud in industry, but there is as much fraud in education.  An example is the enrollment of unqualified students who are told that they will find jobs appropriate to college graduates but never will because they lack the writing skills.  Often, colleges will tell applicants  that if they matriculate, they will get high-paying jobs. The students do the necessary work, and of course make the necessary payments, but in the end they do not get a job equal to the one promised.  This is especially true of business schools, which use statistical manipulation of data on graduates' salaries to trick students into attending.

The film The Wizard of Oz adumbrates the academic scam.  The Wizard tells the Scarecrow that he doesn't need a brain--all he needs is a diploma.  As William Leach points out in his Land of Desire, which is about consumerism, The Wizard of Oz is about consumerism, for its author, Frank L. Baum, was one of the first modern advertising men. He created the window displays at Wanamaker's.  The Wizard, the man behind the curtain, is the same old snake oil salesman whom Dorothy knew in Kansas, but he uses new imagery:  the medal for the Cowardly Lion, the testimonial for the Tin Man, and the diploma for the Scarecrow.  Coinciding with the development of commercialism and marketing is the development of the university degree, a replacement for intellect and education.  This point is captured by Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago in the 1940s, who decries the advent of the anti-intellectual university in his Higher Learning in America.  

But the illiteracy-producing university?  This is a topic that deserves more scrutiny. How many of America's college grads cannot write and are literally illiterate?
 
I moved to Manhattan after a small college on Long Island canned me. One of the doormen in the building had attended the same college. The college produced doormen.  Like Dante's admonition to abandon all hope,  they should have said as much above the doorway to the administration building, perhaps employing one of their own alums to open and close the door for prospective students. 

What is the role of standards-setting bodies in limiting the modern university's fraudulent production of illiteracy?  From what I can tell, the current standards-setting bodies in American universities are indifferent to whether college graduates can read, write, or do basic arithmetic.  Admittedly, I have not studied the question, but recently I heard a former chair of the board of trustees of a public university state that his students were at the national norm. But I know first-hand that a large share of his students are illiterate.  This suggests that the problem is pandemic.

Is the production of illiterate college grads a form of fraud?  If the college admits openly that it is graduating illiterate students, and it tells the students that if they cannot write, then they cannot find jobs, then it is not committing fraud.  The board of trustees chair did no such thing.  He insisted that his illiterate students are literate.  The students pay for an education, so if they are paying thinking that they are being educated, and they are not, then the university is committing fraud.  Fraud is lying for money.  Colleges like to claim that their graduates will all get great jobs.  I suspect that a large share of colleges, including top business schools, routinely commit fraud.  Many, but of course not all, higher education institutions have ethical characteristics much like Enron's.