Were there grammatical and punctuation errors in the May 17 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune? You bet, and here is a summary of them:
* Too many hyphens.
* Double periods at the ends of sentences.
* Prepositions substituted for verbs.
* A simple sentence followed by a sentence fragment, instead of a complex sentence.
* Missing articles and commas.
* Pronouns that do not agree with their noun antecedents.
* Sentences that have multiple subjects and no predicates.
* Dangling participles.
* Nonparallel comparisons.
* Misplaced modifying clauses.
* Run-on sentences.
* Comma faults.
* Problems with subordinate conjunctions.
* Predication errors.
* Problems with coordinating conjunctions.
In fact, one of you found an error in a paid obituary that indicated one woman had been married at age 4.
If you are ready to run screaming from the room, think of what it must have been like to pore through the red-inked copies of The Salt Lake Tribune that eagle-eyed readers sent to me after I issued a grammar-alert challenge two weeks ago.
It was enough to make me diagram some sentences to calm down.
The two winning grammar entries were submitted by Robert L. Brown of Cedar Hills and Sonja Jorgensen of Draper.
Brown is retired from the U.S. Diplomatic Service and teaches Spanish and English. I offer this example of his comments (from his notes on my Saturday column):
“I take issue with your use of the word ‘done.’ Jobs get done and bread gets done. People get ‘finished’ with tasks or projects. People don’t get done unless they get baked or someone gets finished with them — as in ‘done-in.’ ”
I love this guy.
Jorgensen read the A section, the Utah section, the Body & Soul section and the Sports section. She wrote in a note accompanying the marked-up sections:
“Thank you so much for this wonderful challenge! I had so much fun ‘proofreading’ the paper. I have always enjoyed such work and often spend hours just fixing errors on e-mails before I will forward them to my friends (yes, it is an irritating habit.)”
This the type of reader I love.
I have mailed both of these volunteers gift certificates for restaurants.
Navel gazing: The amount of paper used to print the writing during the last few weeks about the wayward former reporter for The New York Times, Jayson Blair, cost lots of trees their lives. Indignation, whining, attacks on
affirmative action, screeds on the behavior of NYT editors and general wails about the state of American journalism have found their way into printed columns and across the Internet.
It’s time to stop and consider the simple ramifications of Blair’s seeming ability to make up details, create
descriptions of places he had not visited, take the reporting of other journalists and pass it off as his own and then, unrepentant, make a book deal so he can tell his side of the controversy.
Blair is a self-admitted alcoholic, drug-user and con man; his latest remarks — how smart can the Times’ staff be if he got away with all this for years — only display the depth of his illness.
Here’s the deal, Jayson: You are what you do, not what you could be or would be.
Every time you lie, plagiarize or fabricate, you make yourself a liar, plagiarizer and fabricator.
The fact that you got away with this for such a long time is problematic for the Times, because it illustrates a culture where blowing smoke up someone’s shorts was an accepted way of doing business. But it is not a smear on all of journalism. I once had to suspend an editor of a newspaper’s entertainment tabloid section, because he had attempted to extort meals and drinks out of a local club owner in exchange for favorable coverage. The man was drunk and tap-dancing on his desk, but I managed to suspend him while two security guards carried him out of the newsroom.
You are what you do; it’s as simple as that in this business.
This week’s scoreboard:
Number of readers who complained about the Sunday comics: 8
Number of readers who want to know why The Tribune covers anything about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 23 Number of readers who want to know why some Tribune comics are missing from the Sunday comics pages: 11
Number of readers who want to know why journalists are so self-absorbed (re: the Times beating its breast about Blair): 25
