Tuesday, June 23, 2015
I'm a Snob
I quit reading two articles today because I decided that if the writers couldn't write with precision, then what they had to say wasn't worth reading. I stopped reading one article when I came to a bit of wisdom about what "the Muslim hoards did when they invaded Spain." If the writer doesn't even know that a hoard is different from a horde, why should I give him my attention? And then I saw this: "While locked in a cell, the man's lawyers petitioned for his release." Possibly this sentence really means what it says, but I doubt it. At any rate, I didn't read any further to find out. I'm a snob.
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13 comments:
Good for you, Bill. To be impatient with grammatical errors or imprecision marks you as someone who cares about details and order, not necessarily someone who is a snob.
Written by another person who might be described as a snob for the very same reasons.
Cheers,
Jeff
I don't consider you a snob; I consider you to be a person who understands, appreciates, and even needs precision in the written word. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I recently read an article where "of" was used for "have" (as in, he should of known the car needed gas) FOUR times!! A shocking decline in journalistic standards.
And I once gave up on a well-received novel because a starlet in 1947 Hollywood described herself as "getting bit parts in noir movies." If the writer hadn't done enough research to know that the term "noir" didn't even come into existence until the 1950s and originally in France, I didn't feel as if I wanted to give the book my time.
Now that would be a great recurring feature: Why I gave up on this book (or article). I'm sure regular visitors to your blog would be able to keep it going for years!
I bet you gave up reading Facebook &/or Facebook comments, to say nothing of political blogs, long ago 8-)
I should too but I'm somewhat addicted and I do limit myself.
Maybe his lawyers were locked in a cell. Or maybe the guy who wrote the article should have been.
And I will definitely keep off your lawn.
Jeff
On my little ad-free, non-paying blog, I occasionally (of often) have typos and such, but I think journalists should be held to a higher standard.
That second item would be a good entry for the "Sic" section of Michael Quinion's WorldWideWords website, which I recommend to all grammar and diction "snobs" like us.
Art Scott
Just becaus som of us dont rite as good as yuo doint mean were not smort.
Yeah, that's true, but I graded too many papers in my teaching career to put up with stuff that grates on my nerves now. F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't spell worth a darn, but he was a great writer. Thank goodness for copyeditors.
I found this one today, in an Oregon State Police news release about a head-on crash and subsequent fire on I-84:
"The truck had was loaded with recently harvested salmon which took hours for fire crews to fully extinguish.”
But at least cops don't pretend to be journalists.
There's a lot--a LOT--of this kind of thing about.
Man, I don't blame you.
Man, I don't blame you.
The writing skills of my students continue to decline, too. Our culture's literacy is in Big Trouble.
Correct use of grammar and language is declining at an alarming rate.
Did I say that correctly?
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