Speaking of national broadcasters, I've been noticing BBC
Worldnews folks (dare I call them professionals?) who
don't bother to make subjects agree with verbs.
Hal
“I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.”
--Martin Luther
Halvard Johnson
================
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On Jan 18, 2009, at 5:51 PM, Caleb Cluff wrote:
> It's appalling. As an editor for the national broadcaster here, I'm
> constantly pulling copy from trained journalists and virtually
> having to
> hammer it into some form of legibility.
>
> Grammar and punctuation are necessary for forming clear thought. I
> can brook
> no argument that says otherwise. Break the rules if you want, but
> know them
> first.
>
> </rant>
>
> Caleb
>
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Mark Weiss
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From this side of the border this discussion smacks of fairytales.
>> In most
>> of the US public education has been in free fall for the last two
>> generations, with elementary schools passing on functional
>> illiterates to
>> high schools which pass them on in turn to colleges. I remember a
>> girl in my
>> freshman comp class in Arizona, who told me that the longest paper
>> she'd
>> ever been asked to write in high school was a one paragraph movie
>> review.
>> She had a hard time writing a sentence, and she was an average
>> student in
>> the class. It gets worse. To graduate from U of Arizona she had to
>> take and
>> pass freshman comp, but she didn't have to do it as a freshman. She
>> was a
>> junior.
>>
>> This is not atypical, and Tucson is by no means the least literate
>> US city.
>> And it's not a matter of failure to read, though some of that girl's
>> classmates had a hard time reading a newspaper, and none of them
>> could read
>> it critically. Basic formal education seems to have fallen out of the
>> curriculum.
>>
>> Want to know how bad it's become? Pick at random 5 English
>> dissertations
>> accepted in 1960 and compare them with five in 2005. These are the
>> teachers-to-be.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>>
>> At 05:55 PM 1/18/2009, you wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, Doug, it is the lack of reading that causes most of the
>>> problem. You
>>> can teach kids grammar and punctuation at primary school level,
>>> then again
>>> at high school level, and still have them ignorant because it is not
>>> reinforced in their 'real' lives. They watch visual media and hear
>>> songs
>>> and
>>> sound tracks without ever coming across the need for printed
>>> punctuation.
>>> You can hear it in the way many first year uni students read aloud
>>> - they
>>> simply plow through commans, colons, full stops, etc, and pause
>>> whenever
>>> they run out of breath! I try to point out how to read using the
>>> punctuation, and in doing this show them some examples of how
>>> commas and
>>> such actually help supply the meaning (and often the rhthym) of
>>> what is
>>> written. But we are fighting an increasing tide with buckets of
>>> sand, I
>>> fear.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>> 2009/1/19 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
>>>
>>>> Sadly, you may be, Christopher. I know that teachers try to teach
>>> grammar
>>>> to ten year olds (my wife did), but apparently it doesnt stick, or
>>>> something. And then, when you factor in what (if anything) they
>>>> read,
>>>> including newspapers, wherein typos, bad writing, etc now appear
>>> regularly
>>>> because there is no such ting as a copy-editor any more. But
>>>> mostly when
>>> you
>>>> factor in the fact that most young people just dont read that
>>>> much, so
>>> they
>>>> have not seen enough sentences to be able to recognize a working
>>>> one
>>> from a
>>>> non-working one, well, yes, if they want to write well now theyve
>>>> made
>>> it
>>>> into university or college, then they require, once again, to be
>>>> taught
>>> the
>>>> basics....
>>>>
>>>> Doug
>>>>
>>>> On 17-Jan-09, at 9:59 PM, Christopher C Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have just done a quick search on the use of quote marks and was
>>>>> surprised to find how to use was directed at first year college
>>> students
>>>>> in the USA undertaking writing courses.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ummm... is this related to grammar no longer being taught in
>>>>> primary
>>> and
>>>>> high school, as if learning how to use inverted commas is too
>>>>> intellectually taxing for a ten year old child? It has me
>>>>> worried that
>>> a
>>>>> college professor needs to teach basic grammar before anything
>>>>> else? I
>>>>> can understand it for journalism since the inverted pyramid is
>>>>> very
>>>>> strict and not generally well known but for first year writing
>>> students,
>>>>> I have some difficulty.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would have assumed a first year writing student for the first
>>>>> week's
>>>>> assignment could write a dramatic monologue in a voice not their
>>>>> own
>>>>> (usually the opposite sex) and for a term paper a 3,000 word essay
>>> using
>>>>> traditional academic footnotes and citation without needing to
>>>>> be told
>>>>> how to.
>>>>>
>>>>> Am I assuming too much?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Douglas Barbour
>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>
>>>> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ <http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Edbarbour/<http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Latest books:
>>>> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>>>> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>>>> Wednesdays'
>>>>
>>>>
>>> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>>>>
>>>> Oh, goddamnit, we forgot the silent prayer.
>>>>
>>>> Dwight D, Eisenhower
>>>> [at a cabinet meeting]
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrew
>>> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
>>>
>>
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