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Friday, January 30, 2009

Criminal Sentence 161: School Gets it Doubly Wrong

Two errors from a one-page newsletter sent home from my son's elementary school:

"Lets make 2009 an active and healthy year!" (apostrophe missing)

"Any student who would like to raise money for the American Heart Association, may do so by bringing in donations during the week of Jump Rope for the Heart." (unnecessary comma)

Are schools exempt from promoting good punctuation? No.

Am I personally going to have to teach my children good punctuation? Yes, because I can't rely on the schools.

Sad, huh?

4 comments:

DrCarrieT said...

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't it be "School Gets it Doubly Wrong"?

I also thought I'd share this sentence from a notice about health care rights.

According to the notice, my benefits include "reconstruction and surgery to achieve symmetry between the breasts, prosthesis, and complications resulting form a mastectomy."

That's some symmetry.

The Sentence Sleuth said...

You're doubly right! Correction made!

Anonymous said...

I've often wondered why people tend to stick a comma between a long subject and the predicate. Do you know why?

It just seems like a strange error to make to me.

The Sentence Sleuth said...

Good question, John. I'm not sure why people add commas after long subjects, but have you ever read Dickens? He does that sometimes, so I guess it used to be acceptable.