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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (3700)	2/26/2001 12:34:47 PM
From: Jim S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

PS, hope you feel better after your vent. The problem you are having, I think, is that you make the assumption (with all that implies) that he writes like he speaks. Do you make the same assumption for people with a lisp? Or a stutter? If you'd pay closer attention to his meaning, and put less emphasis on the superficial, you might find that he makes sense. IMO, too many people put more emphasis on plastic superficialities than on actual meaning. While you may never get used to his speaking style, give his ideas a chance. jim

To: Paul Senior who wrote (3700)	2/27/2001 5:28:48 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

PMFJI, but you did invite comments. I also wince at some of Bush's lapses. But I also distinguish between informal speaking and formal writing or speeches. And I think some of his language use may be regional. But also, those who live in glass houses.... Let's look more closely at the message in which you criticize his language. But geez, I DO resent the President's 3rd grade gaffs. I don't find them amusing at all. To me, it's like an insult. Since you are referring to gaffs (when you should have written gaffes, unless you were fishing for criticism), which is plural, you should have used the plural they're, not the singular it's. Or you should have recast the sentence not using a pronoun, but saying something like "To me, his errors are ...." [I won't even get into what Strunk and White would say about the sentence itself.] Disrespects people who love the language or who try to study the language to improve themselves. That's a sentence fragment, not a sentence. Not a subject to waste time on. Ditto. His political defenders may also be saying get over it, that's the way the man is. This would be grammatically correct if you had quotation marks around "get over it." Since you don't, it should be "saying that I should get over it" or, possibly, though I don't like the construction, "to get over it." But as you have it, it's not correct. So... eventually... I guess I will lighten up. That's an improper use of ellipses. To me though, managers and leaders... Where's the comma after me? It's required in that construction. And the end of that same sentence has an incorrect parallel construction. (Parallel construction errors are one of my pet peeves -- none of my students graduated from my classes without a thorough grounding in parallel construction.) There are numerous other grammatical errors in your post, but the point isn't to embarrass you. Or at least not more than I already have. The point I'm obnoxiously making is that even someone who is as passionate about grammar as you are can make numeous grammatical errors in a single message. And in your case, you were writing and could see and correct any mistakes before you committed your writing to public view. Bush's errors are mostly from extemporaneous speaking. Even if he recognizes an error, once the words have left his mouth they've been recorded by dozens of eagle eared reporters and can't be withdrawn and corrected. I would love to have a President whose command of the English Language was equal to Churchill's. (And some people can quibble about the use of "love" in that context; it's more colloquial than strictly correct. But let it stand.) But if you're going to criticize Bush for his errors, you shouldn't do so in a message which is itself filled with grammatical errors. And now Joan can tear THIS message apart. And she will! So goes it.