BTW, yur communicashun sux.
Published May 12, 2005 - Calgary Herald


My office is just like any other. People come and go. Emails, faxes, phone calls, voicemails, and plain old regular mailings buzz around our hive as we go about our daily business. The buzzing is so normal, so easy, that we forget its significance. We forget the simple rules that turn a crude, amateur message into a professional, intelligent statement.

I receive emails on a daily basis-work-related, personal, or otherwise-that include pseudo-words like "shud", "cud", and "tx". I spend more time interpreting these messages than I do carrying out the request. At times, I give up.

Faxes are sent with no addressee, no return address or contact information, no explanation of what is being sent. Sometimes they have little happy faces, sometimes they are written in all capitals, and sometimes they are overwhelmingly over-punctuated.

I realize I'm one of the few who loves the thrill of a well-placed comma and gets excited about semi-colons; I enjoy putting forth the effort to ensure clear, efficient communication. I also realize that I can't expect everybody else to have that same infatuation. Still I have to ask, is it simply too time-consuming, too much of an effort to communicate effectively?

Perhaps we just don't realize the immense effect communication, and the lack thereof, has. Perhaps we've forgotten, or worse, never known. Maybe we've been bombarded with ads and memos and flyers and billboards since we were quite small, and communication has lost its significance; we've become numb.

We've trained ourselves to ignore the communication sent our way: we disregard television commercials, we identify and delete spam emails with increasing efficiency and swiftness, we shut down internet pop-up ads without a second thought. Pair this media assault with the utter ease and accelerated frequency of our own communication and the result is a less-than-sufficient amount of decency and professionalism. And of course, bad communication breeds bad communication.

We're told first impressions are everything, but so are second, third, and forty-seventh, right? These impressions are affected by everything about us, including-I'd even dare to say especially-our communication style. When I see an abundance of spelling mistakes, I think 'lack of intelligence'. When I see the over-use of chat-room acronyms, I think 'lack of maturity'. Both lead to a lack of credibility. Quite honestly, I think twice before giving my business or my complete trust to someone who conducts themselves in such a style.

I don't mean to suggest that everybody should be a grammar hound or a stuffy, fussy communicator-in fact, a little playfulness is more than welcome in the right situation-but we need to take a complete inventory of what we want and what image we need to portray to get it. I'm likely to think that, for certain people in certain jobs and certain positions in life, smiley faces and internet slang are not the extra boosts needed to get them to that ever-coveted next rung on the never-ending career and life ladder.