A study of college students finds that they have a startlingly low level of literacy when it comes to reading and understanding various types of printed information, including postal instructions, gas bills, survey tables, and — yes — news articles.

Take a look at the study and scroll down to Appendix A, which contains some sample questions. Only 75 percent of four-year college students and 83 percent of two-year college students could properly fill out the name and address portions of a certified mail slip. Only 27 percent and 24 percent, respectively, could read a news article and summarize one of its key points.

What’s more depressing is the even lower scoring of the overall adult population on these same questions. (Remember that only about a quarter of American adults age 25 and over have a college degree.) Only 16 percent of American adults answered correctly when asked about the aforementioned news article.

Thankfully, most of us bloggers use easy-to-understand four-letter words in our commentary, with abundant use of punctuation and emoticons to graphically demonstrate our points. And yet an infinite number of bloggers typing away at an infinite number of keyboards can, theoretically, produce a work of Shakespeare — or at least a humdinger of a post on Boing Boing.

😉

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen