> The need for summarizing is a > symptom of our increasingly > poor communication and degrading > writing skills. Whilst I agree there is a societal decline

> The need for summarizing is a > symptom of our increasingly > poor communication and degrading > writing skills. Whilst I agree there is a societal decline, there has also always been a corporate tendency towards verbosity and opaqueness. The old rule from the days of memos still seems to apply: ignore first paragraph, get positive / negative gist from second, learn about the impact in the third, ignore remainder.