Vanity Fair Edits Sarah Palin!

Vanity Fair, how I love you.  I recently lamented the terrible writing in Sarah Palin’s resignation, but didn’t have the time, fortitude, or red ink to edit it.  Vanity Fair had all three.  Read their edit here.

Enjoy!  If you are a grammar geek like me, you can consider it a mini-holiday.

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Update:  Thank you, Jeff, for this link.  I actually find diagramming sentences to be therapeutic, but you might not all agree.   But it is enlightening.  My favorite part of it is this sentence, when the author is trying to diagram a particularly twisted sentence:

“I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there’s anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I’d be delighted to hear from you. To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (“with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push buttons.”

Merriam-Webster Announces New Words!

It’s my favorite time of year again. Haven’t you been waiting for it?  Yes, there’s nice weather all around and time for staycations.  But I’m talking about Merriam-Webster’s new words!

What’s that? You’ve never heard of a “staycation”? Well, now you can find it in the dictionary.

For the second year in a row, I’m happy with a few of the entries.  I like “fan fiction” and “waterboarding.”  (Well, that the word exists in the dictionary, not that the practice exists.)  Plus, I always wondered if that particular torture should be hyphenated, and now I know it shouldn’t be. 

But did we need “frenemy” and “green-collar”?  “Memory foam” is useful in some circles, I suppose, as is “zip line.”  And “sock puppet” isn’t new (it was new in 1959) but has a new secondary definition you might not have known. 

Go enjoy these new words, folks.  If you can use each one in a sentence (correctly) by the end of the weekend, I’ll send you a present.

Sarah Palin’s Resignation Tragedy

Judging by the comments from my last post, only a third of my readers will stop reading an article if the writer employs bad grammar or punctuation.  The other two-thirds might judge the writer or criticize him or her, but will continue to read. 

Following that, I just have to wonder what you all think of this piece of writing.   The link is to Sarah Palin’s speech announcing that she’s resigning as Governor of Alaska.  I’ve been meaning to write about it for days, but the flu has kept me from it.  I must thank my dear friend Brendan for pointing out what a tragedy of the English language it is.  (If you enjoyed the SNL Tina Fey skits from the election, please go read the speech in its entirety.  I don’t think any comedy was intended, but it sure is easy to find in it.)

 Sarah Palin gave this speech as governor.  She has a college degree, a staff who could have written for this her, and what I can only assume is access to several proofreaders.  Yet we end up with many sections like this:

“Alaska’s mission – to contribute to America. We’re strategic in the world as the air crossroads of the world, as a gatekeeper of the continent. Bold visionaries knew this – Alaska would be part of America’s great destiny.
Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, and oil and gas. It’s energy! God gave us energy.”

Yes, God gave us energy.  And man gave us grammatical rules and tools.  But Gov. Palin gave us sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and superfluous punctuation marks.  Right here, in the following two sentences, she shows a blazing disregard for verbs:  ”Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, and oil and gas.”

I won’t go into how ridiculous I think her argument is that staying in office her full term would be just “politics as usual.”  I promise.  It’s killing me, of course, but I don’t want to distract from the blatantly bad writing that is her resignation speech.  It’s just bad writing, people.  I started to get out my red pen and my Google Docs to share some fun with you, but I didn’t have the strength.  Where would I even start?  Would it just be editing to correct for punctuation errors?  That would take a while.  Then there would be the lack of subjects and predicates in any logical relation to each other.  Or would I try to get into style? I couldn’t get into style, of course.  I am too far away from her politics and mindset to try to give her style tips.

I realize, of course, that this is the transcript of a speech, and some politicians take artistic license with speeches.  But what artistic value is served in the next sentence? “So much success in this first term – and with this success I am proud to take credit… for hiring the right people!”  Why the dash?  Why the ellipses?   And even if it is a speech transcript, it’s posted on the State of Alaska’s website.  Doesn’t that deserve proofreading?

I don’t have a lot of points I’m trying to make here.  I’m just trying to say that our elected officials should pay attention to the elementary grammar rules we were all taught in grade school.  Is that asking so much?

Would Like Your Opinion

“Kidron this morning wrote in a research note that his checks with the channel find the company’s sales in teh quarter might come in light of the company’s guidance of $92 million to $94 million.”

“Don’t you run spell-check? ‘Sales in teh quarter might come in light.’

Hard to have credibility when you make such silly errors.”

Comment by Anonymous – June 26, 2009 at 10:10 pm

“I don’t think mis-spelling the word ‘the’ is that big a deal. Did it prevent you from reading the article or understanding it?”

Comment by stop being lame… – June 27, 2009 at 10:17 pm

The exchange above is from comments on an investing blog.  I happen to agree with Anonymous, and I’m sure none of you are surprised.  I’ve said on this blog before that I think sloppy writing can be a sign of sloppy thinking or reasoning.  I also think it is just good business practice (any practices in many other parts of life) to double-check your work.  (See, I learned something from my math teachers.)  Or if you aren’t going to double-check your work, at least SPELL CHECK, as Anonymous suggests.

But I’m a grammar geek.  Dear Readers, what do you think?  Does the misspelling of a common word affect your opinion of an article or blog?

Oh How I Love Lessons Like This!

Thanks to San Diego John for this great picture.  If you are going to insist people speak English, please first be sure that you are proficient in the language.

See? The Onion Gets it!

Even fake newspapers understand the importance of good grammar. 

The Onion Asks “Who or whom?”

For Fun

Have you seen this blog?  It provides lots of laughs for me.  I particularly enjoy the absurdity of this entry.

Approaching 5K

Hey all readers:  I’m approaching 5000 hits!  I know that isn’t huge when it comes to blogs these days, but I have to imagine it’s big when it comes to grammar blogs, right?  Thanks for your readership and support!

Birmingham, UK Suffers the Loss of Apostrophes

I’ve known exactly one native of Birmingham, England: Lynn Simmonds.  She was the mother of the family from whom I rented a room during foreign study.  My memories of her paint her as matriarchal and angry.  I remember once she said “I like being up high and looking down on things.”  I think she meant me. 

Anyway, Lynn was all I knew of Birmingham, (except that it’s pronounced Birmingum, not BirmingHAM) until its city council made a decision in late January to remove apostrophes from city street signs.  That’s right, no apostrophes on city street signs.  According to The Telegraph, “The council said the move had been taken for the purposes of consistency and to avoid costs and confusion over whether place names should ever take an apostrophe.”

Apparently there had been a lot of debate in the past over where apostrophes should and should not be on these signs.  For example, should Kings Norton be King’s Norton or Kings’ Norton?  Well, the city council said it was just going to be Kings Norton from now on.  They have no time, they say,  to deal with the many requests they receive to add, remove, or move apostrophes.   So they just won’t have them.

It reminds me of what a mother might do when two of her children are arguing over a toy.  “Fine!  Neither of you can play with it!”  It smacks of desperation, indecision, and futility.  The city council is throwing it’s hands in the air and saying, “We don’t know what else to do, so we’ll just act as though apostrophes don’t exist.”

It’s matriarchal and angry, and Lynn Simmonds might love it.

Maybe I’m Not Meant to Text

The kids these days use special texting language.  And when I say the kids, I mean my friends.  I think a grammar-freak like me isn’t meant to text.

I stumbled upon this article today, and it just proves to me that I shouldn’t try to talk my friends into using “tonight” when they would rather use “tonite” or even (shuddering) “2nite.”  Never mind that I’ve posted about this before.

What’s your favorite texting abbreviaton?  I promise not to judge you.

(By the way, I’m impressed that I allow myself to use “text” as a verb.  That’s coming a long way.)