Fale Conosco

When I go to schools, I ask the children what they think are the professions in which writing is the protagonist. Journalist, writer, and professor jump out immediately. Then I help them with copywriters, TV writers, ghostwriters, screenwriters, public relations officers, web writers … Most of them take on a vague air as if the writing didn’t concern them. And then my four aces down the opposite is true, because writing (necessarily correctly and possibly effectively) is for everyone, without exception. In fact, not just a novel is written. We also write: a shopping list, a letter of protest, a post-it, a business plan, a diary, a WhatsApp message, a haiku, a tweet, a petition, a love card, a resume, a letter of excuses, a caption, a post on Facebook, a poem, a request for funds, a journalistic article, a short story, a congratulatory ticket, a quote, a complaint, a TripAdvisor review, a promotional e-mail. Do you plan to open a bar in the future? Well, you will need a Facebook page to promote yourself, you will have to fill out forms to access the calls for funding, you will write e-mails with which to negotiate better conditions from the suppliers, you will put the quote on paper for those who want to organize a cocktail from you. Everyday life puts us in constant contact with the written word and this should not cause us problems, even considering that in Italy the literacy rate is close to 100%. It is a pity, however, that there is a “little problem” called “functional illiteracy”, which affects 28% of the population (in Europe, only Turkey is worse than us). In practice, these people know how to read and write for their website https://typemyessays.com/plagiarism, but are not able to understand the instruction booklet of a mobile phone or to find a phone number in a site when it is not in strict correspondence with the “contacts” link. The reason? Poor practice. Those who do not have the habit of reading and writing can lose the ability to understand and write even very short texts. The consequences? Not being able to read the report of a condominium meeting, understand the reasons for a fine, write a letter of protest, fill out a resume.