Cites Unseen

A friend of mine is tutoring grammar to young minds.  When speaking of verbs that end in "-ing", she sent me to pun jail for the phrase, "He should have gone to gerund."  Oh well, it was probably too obscure for the average middle-school student who is far removed from the diamond engagement.

A few of us are grammar nerds and I was surprised to learn via GBC K1m, that both MLA and APA have a proper format of citation when used as a reference.  [At this moment, my sister is twinging as she already has distaste for the use of Wiki in formal writing.]  While I don't know that this was the exact tweet link, it serves as a pretty neat example of how far we've come for the average English paper.

For further reference, you may want to consider adding A Grammar Book for You and I (Oops, Me) by C. Edward Good to your shelves.  Good is a writer in residence for a group of attorneys (which reminded me of a GBC member or two).

Enjoy the sunshine, and don't forget to punctuate properly. 

Wanted: Cmmercial Wholesaler [sic]

This week I have read a number of job postings which have contained grammatical and/or spelling errors. These mistakes do not bode well for the company image, however should you judge a corporation on an individual error? If you are interested in the position, should you apply and ignore the mistake? Should you contact the company regardless of whether or not interested in the role to advise the poster of their blunder? My HR sources indicate that one should not point out spelling errors during interviews.

So what, then is the appropriate course of action?

1. Ignore. (It is hard to ignore something you have noticed.)
2. Tweet about it.
3. Incorporate the headlines into business lectures.
4. Collect errors and one day publish an award winning business book entitled Spell-binding
5. Advise the company to correct it.
6. All of the above.

How Tweet it is

updated August 21 (formatting only)

For those of you who have pondered writing a book but did not think you had the time, perhaps you should consider publishing through Twitter. As some of you NPR fans no doubt already have heard, Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin will hit our stores in January. (It is likely to be a quick read.) The books included range from the classic read (The Odyssey) to the closet read (Twilight). My guess is that Aciman's and Rensin's work will also be light enough to be included in your carry-on luggage...and perhaps your wallet.

For anyone who doesn't want to wait until January to get a dose of Twitterature, you can try following @epicretold as Professor Sreedharan tweets Mahabharata. You will need to take a long term view with this one.