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.
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3 comments:
I think you're being a bit unfair. This isn't journalism, it's providing a primary historical source to give insight into what happened. It is a fair question whether you could better express what happened by using a journalistic format, but they didn't really try to say this was journalism.
It's an article, it's in Newsweek. It's journalism. Bleck, I hate reading people's im screen names in a news article.
Also, this whole war against bad grammar is meant to be humorous. Do not take it so seriously. On the other hand, poor grammar really does bother me.
If the journalist was going to write an article she should have described the interesting phenomenon of how technology has changed situations like the one in question. She should have gone into some other aspect of the event and perhaps quoted the conversation as well as others of the same sort.
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