I wrote about a thousand words about Columbine, but the blogger machine ate them, dagnabbit.
I will do my best to recreate my genius review (ahem) soon.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Happy 50th Birthday Strunk & White!
"Allow myself to introduce.....myself." -- Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.
Whippersnappers don't seem to believe in things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure, and all kinds of boring stuff like that, but I think the world would be a better place if every kid's parents gave him a copy of "The Elements of Style" for his or her 10th birthday. And a copy of Mrs. Baldrige's book about manners. And then, when they graduate from college, they should get a book about executive communication and manners.
Not only would this completely eliminate the misuse of the word "myself," (i.e. "If you have any questions, please see Jen or myself."), I will never again have to open my work email to see a message from some 23-year-old with the subject line, "it's me again." I am not making this up. That was a message in my in-box last week, prompting me to cry out in outrage, "'It's me again' is not a subject line for a business email!" causing my office-mate to burst into very loud laughter and me to lay my head down and thump it several times on my desktop.
Remember, younguns, what you call style quirks, the rest of us call plain bad grammar!
Whippersnappers don't seem to believe in things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure, and all kinds of boring stuff like that, but I think the world would be a better place if every kid's parents gave him a copy of "The Elements of Style" for his or her 10th birthday. And a copy of Mrs. Baldrige's book about manners. And then, when they graduate from college, they should get a book about executive communication and manners.
Not only would this completely eliminate the misuse of the word "myself," (i.e. "If you have any questions, please see Jen or myself."), I will never again have to open my work email to see a message from some 23-year-old with the subject line, "it's me again." I am not making this up. That was a message in my in-box last week, prompting me to cry out in outrage, "'It's me again' is not a subject line for a business email!" causing my office-mate to burst into very loud laughter and me to lay my head down and thump it several times on my desktop.
Remember, younguns, what you call style quirks, the rest of us call plain bad grammar!