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Lesson 1: Why is Writing Important in Business?Basic Spelling Matters
Why do we have spelling standards in English? Why don't we simply spell things the way they sound? This question is often voiced by people who find spelling difficult and bothersome. English spelling has complicated origins and often it doesn't seem to make much sense phonetically, in the modern age. However, standards in written English are very important, and their early adoption is part of the reason for its success as a language. If we spell things the way we speak - as people used to do five hundred years ago - we start to experience the same difficulties in reading as we might in understanding the speech of people with unfamiliar accents. It is standardized English which enables speakers all across the world to understand one another. This has done a great deal to facilitate trade and to establish English as one of the predominant languages of business in the global marketplace. For the convenience of the majority of students, this course is written in American Standard English, which means that words are spelled according to the system used in the USA. Where necessary, there are annotations to help speakers of other variants of English understand words which differ. If you're trading internationally, it's important to be aware of these differences. Less of them occur in formal discourse, so it's often safer to avoid casual, jokey writing, even if it might otherwise seem appropriate. It's also wise to avoid the use of slang terms and idiom, as these might not mean anything to the foreign reader; or worse, they might mean something very different. The linguist Jeremy Smith has collected a list of such terms in his British / American English Dictionary. Although it's common for US academics to talk about 'British English', this is a conflation of two established standards, English Standard English and Scottish Standard English. These standards also use some words differently, have some unique words, and use some different syntactical forms. Some of the features of Scottish Standard English will seem familiar to Canadians, as the influx of Scottish settlers over the past three centuries has heavily influenced the language there. Although it's best for you to try and stick decisively to one standard version of English in your own writing, you should be aware of these variations so that you don't misinterpret other people's communications. Syntax is the system of arranging words which enables us to understand the meaning of sentences. People speaking different variants of English tend to phrase the same questions in slightly different ways. For instance, an Englishman may ask "Have you got the time?" where an American would ask "Do you have the time?" Either of those people may ask "Where do you live?" when a Scot would ask "Where do you stay?" Where an American or Englishman would say "That desk needs tidying." a Scot or Canadian would say "That desk needs tidied." All of these forms are correct in the context of the appropriate national speech. Besides the standard varieties of English which you are likely to encounter among native speakers, there's English as spoken by people for whom it is a second language. Communicating effectively with people in this position is becoming increasingly important for businesses trading in Europe and the Far East, as well as in smaller markets elsewhere. Most foreign businesspeople whom you encounter in this context will have very good formal English, but, again, they may find idiom and casual language confusing. When communicating with them, it's advisable to avoid using really new words (including a lot of business buzzwords, which develop locally before becoming widely established); keep your language straightforward and clear. You may feel that it's unnecessary for you to pay a lot of attention to your spelling if you're using a computer with a spell checker. Spell checkers, however, are far from perfect. They may not be familiar with trade-specific terminology which you need to use, and if you run them automatically they may switch such words for more familiar ones, creating a great deal of confusion. Even a well established spell checker will often fail to spot real words which have accidentally been written in place of other real words - missing the 'm' off the end of 'form', for example, to leave 'for'. Most spell checkers have a very limited understanding of context (if any), so won't realize this sort of thing is a problem. Spell checkers also fail to spot the substitution of words for homonyms - other words which sound the same but have different meanings. The best way to use a spell checker is to combine it with manual editing. Letting it run through a document in the first instance, informing you when it thinks it has found mistakes, will help to get rid of a lot of small errors, and will thus reduce the amount of time which you need to spend on proofreading those documents yourself. Proofreading is a learned skill, and can be trickier than it looks for the beginner, but with practice you'll find that you notice errors more and more easily. This will occur as you learn what to look out for. You'll become familiar with your own mistakes, which may help you to spell more accurately from the outset in future. |
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