<p>Nice one, BassDad!!</p>
<p>More embarrassing than wearing a fanny pack in Paris is saying the word fanny in England, as it has quite a different (and off-color) meaning there :-)</p>
<p>That reminds me of the time in England when I heard one very prim and proper matron say to another, “Keep your pecker up, dear.” Two nations separated by a common language indeed.</p>
<p>Now that I’m getting older, I’m finding that I’m making more spelling and grammar mistakes. This could be due to busyness or sleep deprivation, or maybe the forgetfulness of age. Just a month ago I actually typed “silverwear”. I sensed it was wrong, but for the life of me couldn’t immediately determine why. That really freaked me out! So now I have a little more tolerance for errors others make, especially in casual communication. That tolerance does not extend to official mailings from educational institutions, because these are supposed to be polished marketing tools. If the college lacks the administrative oversight to eliminate an obvious error on their materials that could poorly reflect on them, then I wonder what else falls through the bureacratic cracks? </p>
<p>D has reacted very negatively to e-mails from colleges and even college coaches which contain glaring errors. I tell her that they’re coaches, not professors, but she says “Yeah, but I don’t want a stupid coach either.” I tell her she’s being harsh (wouldn’t have said that years ago, though), but she persists in her negative opinion.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if my posts have errors. I can say that someone here decrying errors is writing run-ons in standard English but is perfectly understandable.</p>
<p>I am sorry about the ouch. (Definitely NOT implying that the OP is the “offender.”) It may even be me.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t embarrass the poster by pointing it out.</p>
<p>My real struggle as an English teacher is trying to get young people express themselves. It really is a lot of work, especially when kids give me rules about how an essay is structured that really keep them from identifying with their own ideas.</p>
<p>Editing in a college publication is important, sure, but I when journalists make routine errors in every published story it is hard to insist on these rules.</p>
<p>I am sure Northwestern offers a wonderful education.</p>
<p>I have been shocked at the slackness of some of the English classes at Brown, but the kids seem to emerge and do wonderfully well in the world.</p>
<p>I am a novelist, and I blush when I think of the edits that my prose has demanded at times.</p>
<p>Yes…I think it’s petty.</p>
<p>The error is regrettable, however your criticism is petty, but it doesn’t really matter. :D</p>
<p>Petty, no. Pedantic, yes.</p>
<p>“Interviews are not required, however they can provide insight.” </p>
<p>Once told that this sentence had an error, my correction would read:
“Interviews are not required, however, they can be insightful”.</p>
<p>Some errors are glaring to some folks but not to others.</p>
<p>I once had a proofreading discussion with a grade school principal who sent a notice home about head lice ‘citings’.</p>
<p>Guess I’m the only one who had to run off and find what ‘fanny’ means in the UK.
Had no idea…</p>
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<p>I am not affiliated with Northwestern but is it correct to assume “now” is supposed to be “know”? ;)</p>
<p>LOL! I saw the same thing and just couldn’t respond!!! Almost choked on my wine! We all make mistakes! ;)</p>
<p>‘Fanny’ means the same thing in Australia. The first time I mentioned fetching my fanny pack to my Aussie friend she looked stunned. I guess she thought I was talking about a very personal item. She later told me she couldn’t figure out just what you would pack into ‘it’.</p>
<p>BTW, in Australia, about a thousand words have different meanings than those that are used in the U.S. Most of them refer to body parts or intimate activities. It’s very easy to use a word incorrectly when you are visiting down under.</p>
<p>Oh, back to the topic- I am very petty about poor grammar. I have to restrain myself from making a caustic reply when I see postings from kids who want advice about getting into med-school or an Ivy; they use words that sound important, but that are NOT words. Same thing for when their request has obvious grammatical errors. (Of course, my errors don’t bother me at all.)</p>
<p>BassDad,</p>
<p>Even among native English speakers, everyone seems to set his or her own standards of what is acceptable in written or spoken English. My hubby, whose school education was in Queen’s English, complains that Americans speak and write erroneously all the time.
An example of a glaring mistake made by top News agencies - “The interest rates were upped today.” There is no verb as upping or upped. Yet CNN and some newspapers use ‘upped’ instead of raised. </p>
<p>We hear ‘He jumped out the window’ without using ‘of.’ Queen’s English requires that you say ‘He jumped out of the window’ not ‘out the window’</p>
<p>Another example-“Meeting with so-and-so”. Queen’s English does not allow use of ‘with’ when saying meeting. ‘Meeting so-and-so’ is sufficient.</p>
<p>Such mutations of English would be unacceptable in England. In India, English has adopted many Hindi words. Therefore, top Newpapers print some Hindi words in English Newspapers routinely.</p>
<p>Bottomline -Language standards are very much set by each region or the region people hail from. Given the heterogeneity of population in the US, it’s not surprising that English evolved so much in the US…and continually evolving.</p>
<p>Oh! By the way, ‘dickie’ means trunk of a car in England. ;-)</p>
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<p>I teach foreign languages to high school students. It is my sincere hope and belief that we need to AIM at perfection, with the total and constant awareness that we will never REACH perfection. Being wrong is part of being human, and there are definitely ways of helping someone learn about his or her errors without humiliating him or her. I would hope that this poster, and all of us teachers, are able to instruct our students productively and pro-actively. We should all try to be as correct and as clear as we can be, because communicating in words is hard enough as it is. </p>
<p>I remember when my D was in grade school and the teachers didn’t want to correct the students’ misspellings on their writing assignments. They didn’t want to cramp the styles of the new little writers, or to interfere with the “process.” All that did was to create poor spellers.</p>
<p>My mother was an English teacher, so correct grammar was important in my childhood home. This emphasis on proper usage was also valued by the schools I attended, so there was no conflict. The same situation does not apply now. I can insist on proper language at home all I want, but it is not enforced in school. One reason was mentioned above by another poster: the misguided decision to not risk stifling young writers’ creativity with petty concerns about spelling and grammar. The second reason was also given above: mainstream journalists do not adhere to strict grammatical standards any longer, and thus many teachers today do not recognize grammatical errors when they see them. An error I see more and more is one of case. People think it’s more grammatical and polite to say “I” rather than “me”, regardless of whether the objective case is indicated. So it’s hard for me to insist my children adhere to the rules when those around them, including teachers, do not.</p>
<p>GFG, we are of like minds. 2+2 is always 4 in elementary school, but many elementary-school teachers seem to be unwilling to enforce the correct spelliing of a word. And I fight the battle of correct usage at home: dh husband refuses to get good/well down. But my kids always get it right! :)</p>
<p>All rules are off on a msg board. I don’t care if people misspell things or drop words or whatever. NOT the same thing as a mailer going to tens thousands of people touting the exceptional nature of a prestigious college.</p>
<p>I think less of Northwestern for letting that mailer go out, but then, I’m an editor. I notice things like that. </p>
<p>More important, my kids would notice it, too. If they were applying to Northwestern this year, they would think less of the university because of the error.</p>
<p>I don’t expect error-free writing of anyone, including myself, but I do expect a major university to go to the trouble of having its mailings proofread by professionals before they are unleashed on the public.</p>
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<p>The problem here, as in the Northwestern publication, is punctuation. The word “however” should be preceded by a semicolon, and followed by a comma. </p>
<p>“The error is regrettable; however, your criticism is petty. It doesn’t really matter.”
or
“The error is regrettable; however, your criticism is petty: it doesn’t really matter.”</p>
<p>Better yet, drop “It doesn’t really matter” completely because it is implied by “petty.”</p>
<p>“The error is regrettable; however, your criticism is petty.”</p>
<p>There. Nice and neat.</p>