Upset that the company's parking lot was less than full by 8 a.m. and emptied out around 5, Patterson sent out an angry e-mail berating employees for laziness and promising to fire managers in two weeks if they didn't shape up. He shut down the employee gym and said "hell will freeze over" before he would allow more benefits.

The e-mail was leaked and posted on the Internet, prompting the company's stock to plunge 22 percent in three days, although it recovered strongly and Patterson remains at the helm of the medical software designer today.

"Frequently e-mails are fired off with never a second thought — no proofreading," said O'Rourke. "And certainly the grammar of instant messaging and text messaging has intruded as well."

The Notre Dame center focuses on teaching students to say what they need to say in fewer words, write at an appropriate conversational level, and organize it in a way that makes sense for the reader. It offers courses in management writing for MBA candidates and business writing for undergraduates.

"They have to focus on the needs of the reader," O'Rourke said. "Otherwise, she won't pay attention, she won't do what you want, she won't retain what you said."

Plenty of experts share the belief that IM creates or at least contributes to bad writing.

Tom Clark, an Xavier University business professor who also teaches writing skills at Procter & Gamble Co., says short communication is becoming the norm as more people derive their habits from instant-response communications media. That may be good news for those who abhor reading long documents but it's not so great for quality writing reflective of long-term thinking, he observes.

"Young people are wrapped up in the speed with which they communicate rather than seeing writing as a reflection of their best selves," he said.

Paula Hill-Strasser, an adjunct business professor at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business, says even the brightest students seem to struggle more with writing than they used to. She suspects the lapses — such as constant use of "they" as a pronoun and writing paragraphs that run three-quarters of a page — are linked to young people's increased multitasking and electronic distractions.

"For whatever reason, we are finding the business writing skill-set to be missing," she said.

Trying to address the shortfall, SMU requires business students to write more company profiles and case studies than before.

But some experts say IM has gotten a bad rap in the office and defend it as a valuable business communications tool.

"The problem isn't due to IM," said Beth Hewett, a consultant on online and traditional writing programs. "Instead, I think that laziness and lack of understanding of formal business conventions are more responsible."