During my seminar yesterday, we were discussing how people learn to write in the stilted, jargon-filled way that so often appears in business communications.

One participant, a lawyer, suggested that this was because they emulate the people in the business that they envy or respect. In other words they write like their bosses.

Someone else suggested that people look at what has been written before and copy that. For example, they’ll read the last two or three press releases and then write on that is similar using the others as templates.

This is the meme theory of bad writing. Bad writing passes down the generations as an accepted way of doing things.