One of the Worst Articles EVER!

"Get me a story about the Burn Out King, stat!  I don't care if you have to write it on your phone--just do it!"

"Okay, boss.  Here it is."

"That was fast..."

It sure was!  How many grammar errors can YOU find?  Where does your brain come to a screeching halt because of the awkward writing?  HINT: first grammar error is in the teaser and the first screech to a halt came, for me, in the second paragraph.  Please feel free to comment with your own findings.

For your amusement and to boost your feelings of superiority:

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, July 23, 2012.

How Many?

Article title: "Lone Gunmen Baffle Police."  Article contents: all about ONE shooting incident with ONE gunMAN.  If your carpets don't match the drapes, hardly anybody will notice.  If your article doesn't match your title, well, somebody should notice!

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, July 23, 2012.

Left and Right

Okay, this is not technically a grammar error, but the formatting error is amusing to me.  Perhaps it's an indicator of how understaffed our local newspaper has become?

Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, July 22, 2012.

It's Crazy Talk

Am I a Grammar Nazi?  Though my students might say so, and perhaps The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal might say so, I'm not.  I don't stop people in regular conversation to point out grammar errors, nor do I always speak or write in perfect English, but I do notice when I find errors in print.  Student papers?  To be expected.  Professional newspapers?  All hail the Grammar Nazi!

Please read the headline from this June 14, 2012 article and tell me what's wrong.  I'll wait.

If you didn't barf a little in your mouth, you didn't notice.  Reread, and this time read out the contraction... there's the barf.

Now read the large text meant to highlight the article's great wisdom.  NOTE: this error is tougher to spot.

Did you notice comma splice making it a run-on sentence?  Though, after the super basic "it's" vs. "its" error in the title, I wouldn't expect them to find a comma splice.

What grammar error annoys you the most?  Have you actually found it in print?  I'll keep posting them!  Finding bad grammar in professional publications is becoming more a given than a hunt.  I'm scared.  Very, very scared.  It's...its...it's...its... er... It is not funny!

Seriously, They Have an Editor?

I live in a small city surrounded by farms and trailer parks.  This is the city that when you mention it by name in the "real" city nearby, people shudder and wonder how you could live so intolerably far away.  This city has everything you'd expect in a big city: loud music thumping from pimped out cars, public urination, teenagers lurking on the sidewalks, "Mister Natural Ice" dumping his empties on lawns, gun violence.  We also have stores specializing in camouflage and chicken feed, tractors slowing down traffic, the smell of manure and not a Starbucks in sight.  This city even has a real newspaper: The Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.

I include for your inspection a picture and caption from the front page of the Monday, June 4, 2012 edition.  I read it and my eye started twitching.  What do you think?  (Clicking on the picture will make it large enough to read easily.)

What irritated me the most:

• Ending a sentence with a proposition. In casual communications, whatever, but in a newspaper?
• The dryer actually made its way around the house?  The dryer?  *sigh*
• "...surrounding stuff..."  Stuff?!?  Why not "things" or "junk" or "like, whatever"?  Can't think of a word?  Don't worry, "stuff" works for all kinds of things!

What part of this caption irritates you the most?  If you have your own irritating newspaper article, please feel free to send it to me and I'll post it here.

Eenie, Meenie, Meinee… C+?

Calculating the grades for a writing class is much more art than science. How I would love to have only “multiple guess” tests to grade—better yet, Scantron—instead of a mound of mushy, subjective, eight to ten page student research papers.

I accepted my first adjunct professor position less than a year after I graduated with my Master’s in English Education. I took in my first load of papers about three weeks after that. It was the moment after I read the first paper that I realized I had NO idea how to grade.

In grad school, the professors used words like “paradigm”, “rubric” and “rhetorical”. I went home and looked them up in a dictionary. The grad school professors tossed around these words like we knew what they meant, and most of the students nodded and tried to look sophisticated while wishing somebody had the guts to say, “Er…what?” We looked at high school papers and puzzled out the anonymous students’ cognitive development based on handwriting factors. We heard over and over again that “multicultural = good”. We learned that the most fantastic idea for a writing class (and for investors in 3-ring binder stock) is called a “portfolio”.

What I never got was an explanation, an example, or a template (I mean a rubric) for grading.

So, how DO you grade a pile of papers?

• Read them all. (Try to ignore the fact that Timmy is a douche bag and concentrate on his writing.)
• Make yourself a cup of peppermint tea to quell the nausea that rises as you imagine yourself having to read them again.
• Read them again, this time pen in hand. Red pen is traditional, but I’ve found it scares students too much so now I use blue. Avoid committing to actual grades.
• Play some Spider Solitaire to let your mind go blank.
• Read them again, this time making helpful comments at the bottom while trying not to overuse the words “awkward”, “wordy” and “sucks”. Continue to avoid grading.
• Wash the dishes, vacuum, dust, reorganize your DVD collection, watch You’ve Got Mail again, print those return address labels you’ve been meaning to make for the past year. In other words: avoid.
• Force yourself to read them again (skim, at least). Find the best and the worst—now you’ve got your A and your F. Sort the rest based on those first two. (Use the “Douche Bag Scale” for any students on the cusp.)
• Try not to think about the fresh pile of papers you’ll get in about two weeks.

Grading = Guessing + How Much of a Pain in the Butt Were You?

Jimmy is a model student. He listens attentively and takes careful notes. When teacher asks a question, more often than not, Jimmy’s hand will be politely raised to just above his right ear and he always has a thoughtful answer. If Jimmy doesn’t understand a lesson, he asks a pertinent question that invariably helps the entire class. His work is always on time and it steadily improves as class progresses.

Jimmy gets an A.

Timmy is a douche bag. He constantly talks to his neighbor during class and rarely brings a working pen. When teacher asks a question, Timmy either mutters a wiseacre comment to anyone listening, or he will shout out the first thing that pops into his head, relevant or not. If Timmy doesn’t understand a lesson, it’s because he’s been texting his friends all class or because he has fallen asleep under his hoodie. His work, however, is never late, though it usually has mustard stains. As it turns out, Timmy went to an excellent high school and he has a natural talent for writing. Timmy’s final work is of exactly the same caliber as Jimmy’s.

What grade should Timmy get?
What grade will Timmy get?
What grade do you want to give Timmy?

For this reason, and this reason only, teachers have always had a sizable portion of their final grading chart devoted to “The Douche Bag Contingency Reserve”, a.k.a. “Class Participation”.

The adventures of grading to be continued in “Eenie, Meenie, Meinee… C+?”