When I got my first real job, I used to get so nervous about writing emails to my boss. I would run spellcheck, triple-check the grammar, read over it again and again to make sure my tone sounded professional and mature and not young and stupid. After painstakingly revising the email for 30 minutes, I would send it to my boss, who would respond right away with a message that looked like:
K let circle back nxt week bout it . thnks
Sent from my iPhone
I had another job where my bosses were heavy emoji users. I would send them super professional emails, trying so hard to overcompensate for how young I was, and they would respond back with a single sentence punctuated with multiple cryface emojis (😂). To this day, I think of that emoji as "corporate" since professionals love to use it for whatever reason. I'm used to it now, but a decade ago I thought it was so odd. I thought we were supposed to be professionals? And professionals are supposed to write with good grammar, right?
I've been thinking a lot about this ever since the latest Epstein document dump. People have been uploading screenshots of emails between Epstein and Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson. And besides all the upsetting and salacious details everyone is discussing, the thing that also surprises me is how bad everyone's grammar is.
It reminded me so much of emails from bosses in my life: short, blunt (almost rude?), typos galore, weird formatting, bad grammar, "sent from iPhone", etc. It's almost as if, once you get to a certain level of power, you no longer need to try. Because the only reason people spend time crafting a well-written email is to look powerful, mature, professional. But if you're already a powerful professional, I guess technically you don't need to make an effort. And if there's no other boss above you, you can do whatever you want.
It reminds me of another email leak, the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. While everyone ooed and ahhed over a bunch of executives talking crap about celebrities, the main thing I remember from that whole scandal was how sloppy and unprofessional emails from executives looked like. I remember reading over those emails with almost a sense of jealousy. If I had sent out an email with even a quarter of the typos they had, I probably would've lost my job.
I know words like "privilege" gets thrown around a lot, and I think we all understand monetary privileges and power privileges and race privileges, but grammar privilege? That's certainly a first.