My small town news paper had the following article this week. I thought I’d share verbatim.
I’m not the great grammarian by any stretch of the imagination; but it somehow seems worse that this article was submitted by teachers. How many mistakes are there? What am I missing?
[ul]
[li]Unneeded apostrophes (week’s and keyword’s)[/li][li]Multiple run-on sentences[/li][li]Plural/Singular agreement. (‘address’ should be ‘addresses’)[/li][/ul]
Do you know if it was something the teachers wrote, or something a reporter wrote after interviewing the teachers? Or was it something a student (not one of theirs) wrote?
Our school sends seventh and eighth- graders out to all the elementary schools to talk to students and teachers. The junior high kids then write what’s going on around the district and put it I the paper. On Saturdays high-school students report what’s going on in the high school. However, most of those are very carefully proofread.
However, Even though I am a teacher, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was written by the teachers themselves. I was horrified at some of the stuff my daughter brought home from school.
Letters also is apostrophed unnecessarily. I don’t know that I’d say anything is really a run-on. They’ve spliced a comma in the sentence on integrity. As for address, I think they’re doing that weird thing where people act as if they and the kid are both singular and plural. “Did we finish our lunch? Wasn’t our apple yummy? Now, let’s lie down and take our nap.” “Today we learned our numbers, how to spell our name and what our address is.” It’s supposed to be cute.
I can say with absolute certainty that there was no report involved. We’re talking about a weekly newspaper that was 6 pages in its entirety. My home town has just over 1,000 people. The reporter is the owner of the paper. I am assuming the teachers wrote it because their name is on the byline With Mrs Bxxx and Mrs Cxxx.
All in all, it’s a nice little paper. When my mom was still alive, she’d always call down there; and tell them when I came to visit her. Sure enough the following week; I’d read where Enright3, son of Mrs EnrightMcC visited this weekend. 
There are a lot of nice things about growing up in a small town.
My brother used to work for a small town weekly (he sold advertising) and I asked him why they put that crap in the paper and he said: “Old ladies love that shit.”.
I just reread this. I can’t stand it when people change spellings to be cute; Kountry Kitchen was a short lived restaurant near me. But to do it with a school column in the paper is unfoorgiveable. Kindergarten Korner? Blah.
I did this on the iPad in a parking lot while waiting for a friend. Spelling it unfoorgiveable is also unforgiveable!! Strangely enough, that’s how the iPad wants to autocorrect it!
I just received a letter in the mail from a parent whose daughter wants to travel to Costa Rica as a student ambassador. All she needs is a pile of cash to fund the trip.
The letter was written by the parent and it’s a horrid mess. It says she was “excepted” to be a Student Ambassador. It says, “. . .will help her learn about different cultures and how they live differently then we do hear”. There are run-on sentences and lack of capitalization of “I”.
Sad.
Haha, I just assumed it was on purpose. I’m not crazy about cute spellings, or “close to the original” spellings either. I’ve seen versions of Dairy Queen in small towns that make me cringe. Dairy Cream, Dairy Kream, Dairy Kreem, Dairy King, etc.
If it’s called “Kindergarten K[sic]orner,” is it possible the students wrote it, and it was presented verbatim out of that misguided, patronizing sense of "cuteness’ adults evince most of the time?
No. Plus don’t forget you’re talking about a group of kids that are just now learning about the letters K and B. It’s not likely they’re drafting an article of any measure let alone one that goes on to describe the word integrity. As far as the double K usage; sadly I think that’s the misguided, patronizing sense of "cuteness’ of the adult teachers.
This is nothing unusual. I once knew a teacher at a pricey public school who couldn’t spell “consonant.” My own daughter, whose language skills are exceptional, was chided by her English teacher for writing “the Joneses” instead of “the Jones’.” (No, she wasn’t going for the possessive form.)
I don’t know about the other English-speaking countries, but both the US and Canada are turning out a generation of illiterates, and it gets worse every year.
I recall cracking up some years ago when somebody interviewed on the nightly news was asked what she did for a living, and responded “I teaches English.”
Removed, wrong thread.
Sadly, having read many, many papers written by elementary ed majors, I am SO not surprised.