Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Buried in the July 4 news: Bad writing costs taxpayers $221 mil. yearly

We'll see if this story gets any play today when the report gets released. This AP article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday, and readership of the Sun-Times, like any American daily yesterday, was very light. Sometimes I think editors bury stories like this when they're bound to make typically noisy special interest groups (in this case public service and teachers' unions) look bad.

From that article:

States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.

The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at least as important in the public sector as in private industry. Poor writing not only befuddles citizens but also slows down the government as bureaucrats struggle with unclear instructions or have to redo poorly written work.

''It's impossible to calculate the ultimate cost of lost productivity because people have to read things two and three times,'' said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National Governors Association, which conducted the survey for the commission.

So it looks like a lot of public employess can't write well. Why didn't they learn to write when they were in school?

UPDATE: Our good friends at Moonbat Central posted on this topic.

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