AS THE KNOWLEDGE economy grows, writing in all industries has become “the work of our time,” says Deborah Brandt, a literacy expert and English professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The digital revolution hogs the media spotlight. But a quieter revolution — the rise of writing as a “dominant form of labor” in the business realm — is equally profound, she says on YouTube:

“I’ve always been interested in observing how writing works beyond the classroom. How, for instance, an insurance underwriter or a policy analyst or a nurse or an animal-care technician thinks about and worries about the words that they’re responsible for at work.

“We know that over the last 50 or 60 years, the U.S. economy has shifted from a base in manufacturing things to a base of services in knowledge, ideas, data, information. And as a consequence of this shift, writing has become the work of our time….

“In my research, I go out around and talk to workaday people doing all kinds of jobs, people who have their hands on their keyboards two or four or eight or 10 hours a day, and what they tell me is writing is hard mental labor, that it uses up time and it uses up spirit.

“And what they think most deeply about…is the effect that their words will have on others when they let them loose into these complex and densely interconnected networks of finance, commerce, healthcare, law, social services. They have to think: Are my words true? Are they fair? Are they legal? Will they help to bring about a good outcome? Will I get in trouble for them?….

“The digital revolution, computers, the Internet – they get a lot of attention…But there has been this other transformation, this rise of writing as a dominant form of labor. (This transition) has been more gradual, it has been quieter…but it is profound….”