Spring Cleaning

I was planning to go to the gym this morning. Instead I got my workout doing spring cleaning. My muscles are much more sore than they usually are after a gym workout. I guess climbing on counters and step stools to dust cupboards and trim will do that to you. The amazing thing is I am nowhere near done with the cleaning. Although, I think I have cleaned the dirtiest spots in the house.

In my psychology class last week I was surprised by another student. We will call her K. K is about my age and bright. She is more of a follower than a leader type, but she's a regular girl. She's mildly earthy in that cocktail waitress sort of way. I met her in class my first day and so far I like her. She is definitely not generic. Last week I sat in my usual spot. I mean, I thought it was my usual spot. It turned out that someone had moved all the chairs around and I confused my usual spot with another spot. Consequently, I did not sit next to K like I ordinarily do. K sat in her usual spot. When our teacher, we'll call her Bobblehead, announced the beginning of class K raised her hand to ask a question. I should have mentioned that we received back some papers and a recent exam all graded.

K asked, "To get the full 10 points on my papers do I need to have no errors of grammatical?"

Bobblehead appeared not to comprehend the question. Understandably. After a moment Bobblehead told K that grammatical errors would reduce the grade.

I did not want to laugh at K. She's a nice girl and I like her. But I was rather shocked that any student would think she would not be downgraded for grammatical mistakes in a paper. In my college days I learned quickly not to split infinitives, splice commas, or dangle participles. Nobody got away with that kind of funny stuff at the 'Dale.

I know I am attending a community college now. I know the standards and requirements are less than the effort I accustomed myself to back in the day (I feel like a dinosaur). Still, I could not help but want to make this story into a funny anecdote to tell other intellectuals -- or to tell myself as the case may be.

Later in class we had to gather in groups and write a sentence to define something we were supposed to be learning that day. The sentence that my group constructed included a big fat dangling participle. I pointed this out and suggested we change it. I received blank stares from my classmates and some muttering about having no memory of such complex matters.

In conclusion, I think I will not make the "errors of grammatical" story into a funny anecdote to add to my repertoire. I think I will just let it slide. I am relieved that I can still get good grades if I keep to the established grammatical rules.

Only One Battle

I have uncovered proof that my slim hold on good grammar is slipping even more. I have certainly lost one battle, and I am afarid it's a big one. The article in question concerns the sad events that occured yesterday at Virginia Tech. I think it is appropriate to discuss this issue and to interview students who were there hiding under desks and scared. But to publish quotations without adding grammar or even correcting spelling? This is another question altogether. It is bad journalism. Who wants to read an entire article consisting of random half sentences, words that are not even words and no punctuation whatsoever? Personally, I find it confusing and annoying. Furthermore, it's lazy. The journalist did not have to write anything. All she did was copy and paste the im conversation then send it to the printer. I am wondering if this is a milestone in the annals of poor writing. I have never seen anyone do this before and I am definitely no stranger to reading random articles. There were a few "OMG"s in there, but no "lol"s yet. Lucky for me it is quoted text rather than the journalist's writing. It would certainly be the end of this war if the latter were true.

I have lost one battle, but I have not yet lost the war against bad grammar. Stay tuned for some serious fighting.

Stop Sporting With My Intelligence

This article explains why grammar is important. That is not the subject of the article. It's actually about the U.S. attorney issue. I am not giving an opinion of the subject matter, because I cannot get past the grammatical issues. Do they teach journalists anything about English grammar anymore? I stopped reading the news about two months ago. I only read headlines for a while. Lo and behold, when I started reading again I began to notice the dismal state of grammer in American journalism. It makes it impossible to understand what the writer meant to say. Here's my favorite sentence from the article:

"The Bush administration's efforts to use an obscure provision of the Patriot Act to replace U.S. attorneys it deemed too vigorous in investigating Republican officials, too slow in indicting Democratic public officials or too reluctant to investigate "voter fraud" -- a euphemism for attempting to suppress the minority vote -- caused me to re-think my opinion of the fairness of Western Pennsylvania's U.S. attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan."

It took me three tries to read the sentence and three more to make head or tail of it. I am still not entirely sure what it means. Furthermore, this article is the third one I have tried to read today. The others were too grammatically difficult for me to trudge through and this one has quickly joined their club.

I declare a war against bad grammar. My blog will fight this war until journalists begin inserting random smiley faces into articles and shortening words and phrases such as "you, your, yours, you are, laughing out loud and in my opinion. " At that time, the war will have been won, but not by me.