What's your excuse for writing badly?

Seth Godin (I began reading the world's most famous marketer thanks to a tribal named Harish) wrote a very interesting post titled Why aren't you (really) good at graphic design?. He argued that even non-designers could become reasonably good at designs because both the tools and the know-how are available at no charge and one could, with a modicum of effort, be good enough to put together things like better powerpoints and webpages (or quizzes, says this blogger).

I'd like to ask a far more basic question to people that I encounter: Why are you so awful at writing? This isn't a call for people to write like Wodehouse or Rushdie, but a plea for decent, everyday writing that helps communicate your thoughts without distraction. That's all. And this isn't very hard to achieve.

And this isn't the rant of a language-Nazi who wants to impose pedantic norms. Over-flowery text will be as annoying as 'disemvoweled' utterances. Language evolves and good for it. But when you write 'dat is gud- u r abslutly rite. i appreciate ur thot' in a public forum such as an email to many or a blog post, it tells me that you're too sloppy to make sure your message will be received with the optimal attention. That kind of text has its place and time. Casualness is not a substitute for informality.

If you're reading this, then you'd be a writer: of emails, of status reports, of tweets, of scraps. Do you not know that we judge you by the word-trail you leave behind? How can you not want to be better at something you do each hour?

Largely, I attribute this to an ignorance or even willful blindness to the possibilities of elegance. (This from a person who is genetically awkward.) What prevents people from attempting to be concise yet meaningful, sharp yet elegant, rapid yet thoughtful? What's your excuse then?

Godin points to a Squidoo page of resources for design. Writing is so well-studied that I wouldn't know where to begin - so the easiest reference for anyone to have a look at would be Strunk and White's little book. That's pretty much all that's needed, one thinks.