In my business, which most of my readers share, our work product is often the written word.  This year, for example, I have already written at least one of each of these: blog, customer letter, customer-satisfaction survey, direct-response letter, Email, employee communication, e-newsletter, Facebook post, feature article, LinkedIn post, marketing communication plan, news release, OpEd, pitch to media, PowerPoint presentation, Q&A, Quora answer, research report, speech, Tweet, Web page and white paper.

 I recently devised a writing challenge as part of a client's process for hiring several high-level people, each of whom would have significant communication responsibilities.  The results were appalling.  They included typos, poor grammar and even complete unresponsiveness to the instructions for the challenge.

Sadly, I say with certainty, use of the English language will only get worse.  The next generations of communicators have developed their writing skills (such as they are) chiefly in social media, often with the imperfect input tools of mobile devices.  In social media, speed (an enemy of good writing) counts, shorthand is gr8 and punctuation doesn't exist. 

I shouldn't complain: the lack of competent writers in corporate America means long-term job security for me.  However, if you're one of those folks who clings to the idea that words have beauty and power, this issue of my Update  newsletter is for you.

I hope you'll enjoy this library of my monthy Update newsletter.  Since each issue contains a number of hyperlinks to other resources, I have had to choose a method of converting a web page into an Acrobat document that preserves these hyperlinks.  Unfortunately, this method occassionaly and unpredicatbly misplaces some graphic elements.  To subscribe to the monthly newsletter, click here.