The art of communication has three grand divisions. The first involves mastery of the subject. The second involves mastery of its presentation, which is usually in written form. The third involves mastery of its reception, which is listening to a spoken presentation and reading of a written presentation.
Our schools and colleges originally devoted themselves chiefly to teaching subjects. Many years ago business and professional men began to discover that they were unable to present the subjects they knew in an effective form. Then began the education of writers. Courses in Business English multiplied.
Scientific bodies and technical corporations undertook to instruct their staffs in the art of speaking and writing. Today, in the United States at least, it is fair to say that we have advanced far in making practical writers of engineers, executives, and editors and reporters of trade and technical journals. No country in the world produces nearly so much as ours in the way of clearly written reports, articles, and textbooks dealing with the affairs of business, industry, and the techniques.
But this very success brings to light our deficiencies in the third and last of the arts of communication. We have plenty of people who know their subjects. We have an astonishing number of excellent writers among those who know their subjects. And they are writing far more than their public can read. Can we not train this public to keep up in its reading?
I am sure that we can�at least to a very considerable degree.
This site is for the busy adult who is dissatisfied with the amount of reading he does in the course of a year. It will be of little or no value to school children. Eminent specialists have written excellent books for them. Their problems are very different from those with which we are going to wrestle here. So far as I know, nobody has given the poor adult a serious thought.