Competent Writing Skills (was Re: teacher rants)

[Joe Varo]

I don't know about this seeming trend towards leniency in grammar and
general writing skills.  The other week I saw an essay in the local
newspaper that was so hideously awful that I wrote a letter to the editor.

The piece contained lines such as:

"Summer afternoons when the tar bubbles bloom in the road wild daisies
beckon girls to seek petal fortunes and weave chains of fragrant dreams."

This isn't even a complete sentence, ferchrissakes.  It also needs a couple
of commas.

Or this:

It [TigerBeat] is the ultimate fanzine.  Glossy, gorgeous, good teeth boys
people its pages."

"Good teeth boys"???  What in the hell is a "teeth boy", much less a "good"
one?

As much as I despised, year after year in highschool, going over grammar
rules, when I see crap like this published in a newspaper, I'm all for
going back to Strunk & White and rudimentary grammar.

Joe The Curmudgeon