The Importance of Written Communication in the Workforce

In a report by The National Commission on Writing it was state that “Writing is a ‘threshold skill’ for salaried employment and promotion” (Bob Kerrey). People don’t keep into consideration the importance of writing in our everyday lives. Even if you are in a math or science field you still have to be able to write up reports or emails to your supervisor or employees.  It isn’t just employees on a salary that writing is a big deal but it is also commonly used in hourly employees. Why is writing such a big deal? How does it affect our future?

Most communication in the workforce is through writing since people are often too busy to have a meeting or if they do have a meeting or an oral presentation is it generally accompanied by a visual presentation (PowerPoint) that involves writing in some way. Without the ability to write how does one report back to their boss or express their ideas for many people to see?

In Jeanne Fahnestock’s article Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific facts, we see that writing is important in every aspect of life. Without people having writing skills we wouldn’t be able to read the words of Einstein or read past scientific documents to help us improve as much as we have in the past 15 years in science.  “A teleological argument claims that something has value because it leads to further benefits” (Jeanne Fahnestock).  Without the abilitity to write their findings, a scientists work wouldn’t matter because people wouldn’t be able to look back on it to use it in future studies.

In M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer's journal Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental politics in America they mention that "A third group of writings is called "articles"; these are written by noted specialists in the field..." It is obviously important that the science specialists can write their findings down because if they trusted someone else to do their writing for them, there could end up being a mistake in their article which would give future researchers false information to go off of.

Written communication is a skill that everyone should possess, not just people in the science field. It is important for a person's ideas to be shared and read by many in order for history to be made or things like advancements in science to be made.