English Prime

[Duane Campbell]

On Fri, 23 May 2003 14:29:18 -0400 Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
writes:
> I guess we'll all be writing like the "new" journalists, who say
> "Important
> events happening at the White House...."  How ridiculous.  Who's
> teaching
> these teachers?

I had a running battle with a professor of journalism who also wrote
opinion pieces and self-syndicated them to small newspapers, I think for
free. I used to red pencil his columns and return them to him, a service
he did not particularly appreciate.

It was not uncommon to find a dozen errors in an 800 word piece. I don't
mean school-marmish prescriptive stuff, but blatant errors -- failure of
agreement, arbitrary capitalization, tense, and quotation marks used like
sugar roses on a wedding cake.

One thing that particularly irked me was his insistence on beginning a
sentence with a conjunction (which I allowed; as I said, I wasn't nit
picking), but then following the conjunction with a comma. I don't even
like to see a single opening word followed by a comma, let alone a
conjunction.

I am happy to say that after I had helped him out with a few corrected
columns, his usage improved considerably. I have no doubt he had his TA
start checking them. But he never let go of the comma following a
conjunction.

So to answer your question, PhDs taching writing at college level cannot
write. That is certainly part of the problem.

D