I was looking through my 12-year-old cousin's yearbook, which had a supplemental autobiography of each of the graduating fifth graders. Within just a few minutes of reading their family histories, likes and dislikes, and tales of their funniest and most embarassing moments, I became increasingly irritated by the number of typos, unclear pronoun references, sentences that could be combined for clarity and concision but weren’t, and inconsistent type font and size. I crossly wondered, why couldn’t these kids be provided with autobiography mad libs so that all information could be edited for correctness and conformity? How could a parent send in a full page of cursive font? How could the teachers not correct all the it's/its errors? I had to put the book aside at the letter J before my head exploded.
Yes, I have a problem.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Earlier this semester a few of the moms at Alison's new preschool were talking about putting together a yearbook. They were showing around a copy of last year's which I can only describe as layout vomit. It was super busy. I volunteered to help out and I think the end result is inspired. :)
I (mostly) proofread for a living, as sad as that is, and my desk has a few wonderful dents created by my skull. You'd think people who speak the language might be able to coherently write it.
Cool blog!
Post a Comment