Business Writing Article
Business Writing
History Lesson
Al Borowski, MEd, CSP, PP
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Business writing today can prove challenging.
You need to worry about being clear and concise. You must consider your
audience, decide whether to indent or use flush left. Your grammar checker yells
at you when you use the passive voice. And, oh, those dangling participles!
Once you have perfected those business writing necessities, you then need to
carefully and skillfully craft your ascenders and descenders with your shaded
capitals.
What? Ascenders and descenders, shaded capitals?
Those were the major concerns of office workers before typewriters became
standard office fixtures. You know, that clunky devise your grandmother kept in
her attic all those years.
You saw one on your senior trip to the Smithsonian.
Business writing before the typewriter involved creating business
records by office workers who relied on precise penmanship.
Wow! Penmanship. Another word from antiquity.
These blasts from the past came rushing back to me recently when
I found a box that contained a peak into my heritage.
The box contained financial records from my father's business,
impeccably handwritten in his unmistakable penmanship. I
discovered an even more surprising treasure. I found a
certificate my mother earned in the Palmer Method of Business
Writing. The certificate carried the date, 1923.
For the last 21 years, I have traveled the United States
conducting Business Writing seminars and workshops. And, I have
written a book to help business professionals with their business
writing and another to help them understand how to use email
correctly and legally. So this discovery about my heritage made
my day. I guess business writing is in my DNA.
All of this aroused my curiosity about the Palmer Method of
Business Writing.
Austin Norman Palmer's mother recommended that he enroll in the
Gaskell Business College, the school started by then-famous
penman, George Gaskell. Here, A.N. Palmer became so proficient at
penmanship that upon completing his education, he taught classes
in penmanship in a business college.
The Palmer Method of Business Writing started to take shape when
he left teaching to work for a company in the late 1880s. Here,
he noticed that the employees responsible for creating the
company's financial records and business correspondence did not
follow the conventional method of ornamental penmanship. They did
not have time to create documents in the flourished style taught
during that period. He observed that these workers kept their
arms completely on the desk and used little movement of the arm
and fingers to form the letters.
Palmer decided to return to the education field to teach this
easier, faster, more efficient style of penmanship. He called his
style "muscular movement writing."
Acceptance of this new system of writing did not happen
overnight. He had to compete with major publishers who dominated
the market with their books on teaching a more flourished form of
penmanship. And he had to convince teachers to learn and then
teach his method as opposed to what they had been traditionally
doing.
His big break came when the Mother Superior from the Sisters of
I.H.M. was impressed with Palmer's method and adopted it for her
schools. His textbook, The Palmer Method of Business Writing,
started modestly in 1900 but by 1912, it sold more than a million
copies.
Later, the New York city school system adopted his method, he won Gold
Metals in 1915 and 1926 for the system and his place in
history of penmanship became secure.
Thank you, Mr. Palmer. Thank you, mom. The term "Business
Writing" has changed dramatically since your time. But I'm glad
to see the concepts of being clear and saving time still apply to
the new meaning.
Yes, please spread the
word. To reprint this article in your Ezine, Newsletter or magazine
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