It’s Not Too Late to Learn How to Communicate!
Texting, tweeting, e-mailing – writing is a part of our everyday lives, right? But the question is, is it good writing? NO!
We’re rapidly losing the art of composition in this digital world. What happened to our thought process? Specifically, what happened to knowing by heart the basic guidelines of the APA writing style? Here’s a refresher course in case you can’t seem to remember…
The APA (American Psychological Association) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. APA formatted essays always include four major sections: the Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References. When formatting a paper in APA style, you’ll need to pay attention to mechanical details such as typeface, line spacing, margins, and page headers. Another major part of APA style is reducing bias in language. The goal is to provide scientific info that’s unbiased, specific, and sensitive to group labels.
APA writing guidelines are like DMV driving guidelines. We have to learn the DMV rules in order to drive, just as we must learn APA guidelines to write. APA rules help drive our thoughts into well-written text on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, not everybody is aware of the importance of the APA writing style (and DMV rules too, but that’s another story for another day).
Recently I posed a final project to my accounting class. It was about a business man manufacturing bird cages, dog houses, and cat castles. The focus was on products, not the actual animals. You can see where this is heading. After three weeks of analysis of the profit margin, the break-even point, and the difference between variable and fixed cost, the final question was:
“What do you see as the role of accounting in managerial decision-making? Defend the use of cost-related accounting for planning and decision-making purposes.”
Below is the answer I got from one of my students:
“I think that John should invest in taken care of birds because they are less messy and not much to do with them to maintain them and feed them and is able to let them out to fly around they will not make a mess, like the dog or a cat would by tearing the couches up and eating on the shoes”
Did I mention this was a college class? And that this is a direct quote? My student could not even place a final period to finish the “thought.”
The carelessness of thought and the uninspired minds of our society are overwhelmingly frustrating to me. I think it’s time we think just a little harder – it’s not that hard, really, everyone should give it try. Obviously, you don’t have to write an essay every time you send an e-mail or text, but these are good places to learn how to be even a bit more eloquent. College writing is just a test of how well you can articulate yourself in the real world, and it pays off to be conscious of how you communicate. If we stop being so sloppy in our writing, we’ll be able to understand each other better, and have more meaningful, more productive conversations.
Sufen Wang, M.S. Accountancy
Wang Solutions, Long Beach, CA (562) 856-0793
Editor: Hannah Huff, M.F.A. Creative Writing: Poetry, (626) 806-5805
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