Lee's double standard for Uni Professor e-mail pal

Vinegartits really is an arse-kisser. She castigates anyone who slips up with a single comma unless they’re her buddies, in which case she leaves them well alone. She complains about cronyism constantly, but she is just as bad as the school board she’s always whinging about when it comes to double standards. Look here at http://tampabaygrammargrinch.blogspot.com/2007/10/back-on-my-day-job-of-grammargrinch.html

The airhead received an e-mail of support from a university professor who complains about students’ writing ability. Lee writes:

>Confirming my suspicions of shoddy oversight of doctoral dissertations came this email from a part-time professor at Nova; he got one of my handouts at Tiger Bay.<

Vinegeartits publishes it without a word about his sentence structure, style or syntax. I can’t be bothered listing all his errors but this beauty from the professor deserves a mention:

>On the upside, the institution does provide writing centers where student’s can go to get help; students rarely take advantage of what is available to them.<

Q. What do a retired English teacher and a university professor have in common?

A. They both use apostrophes to denote plurals!

Idiots.

Tough, Sad and Smart

Tough, Sad and Smart here. http://grammargrinch.blogspot.com/2007/10/op-ed-columnist-tough-sad-and-smart.html


Lee writes: I taught college English for twenty-eight years. My few male Black students coasted, counting on teacher's passing them despite lack of performance.

Although “passing” is a verbal participle (according to Strunk & White), you will insist it is a gerund. Have the decency to use the apostrophe correctly for more than one teacher: teachers’ passing.

Prissy Press Fautleroy Makes Basic Writing Errors

Prissy Press Fautleroy Makes Basic Writing Errors here.


>When in 1997 Bill Clinton used the line-item veto, with which Congress had just armed him, to cancel $200 million for New York state,

Lee writes: The redundant commas around “with…him’ before cut off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase.<


The phrase modifies “veto” and is therefore adjectival, not adverbial. Adjectives modify nouns: Vinegartits mustn't have taught that in her 28 years.

A message from Lee to many. None will correct her.

From Lee’s Casting room couch here :
http://leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com/2007/09/lee-drury-de-cesare-forwarded-message.html


Lee writes: Ms. Elia’s record on excellence in education is quite markedly deficient. Her record is more demonstrative of ambitious pursuit of the superintendent position to bloat hers and other administrators’ salaries than to promote excellence in education.

Those possessives are ugly; recasting might help. If Lee is to persist with such ugliness, she must use the possessive adjective “her” rather than “hers”
to bloat hers … salary

You would have to be stupid to write that, wouldn’t you?



These board-superintendent decisions define a system’s policies that strip teachers of input and thus negatively impact any education excellence

I didn’t realise you were capable of such jargon. Use “affect”.



to be achieved by the very people--classroom teachers-- who insure this transcendent goal.

Flabby passive verb.




The board has colluded with Ms. Elia in squelching teacher input at board meetings, for example, by the Chair’s , Dr. Lamb’s, calling teacher applause of a colleague’s comments “out of order” and gaveling teachers down mid-clause when the meager three minutes allowed them for comment is over.

Your unhealthy obsession with possessives before (what you think are) gerunds will result in this rot.





This three-minute limit is especially offensive, given some board members’ wont to ramble on ad infinitum and all board members’ eating up time by flowery comments to each other on the “awards” they have won for their spurious achievements in the education administration bureaucracy’s ersatz prize scams and raffles.

That long-winded past participial phrase is restrictive. Ditch the comma.




One board member, Ms. Edgecombe, a former principal, has labeled teachers rude and discourteous to the board merely for their even daring to question the administration and the board’s policies. Another board member, Ms. Olson, called teachers lazy in a meeting when they protested the extra class imposed on them by Ms. Elia without their input, and the camera showed that Ms. Elia and Ms. Olson even passed notes during the negative comments on teachers' putative laziness.

Why even do you even use those redundant adverbs?





Ms. Elia’s personal professional ethics as seen by me personally are distressingly deficient.

You like passive voice? It makes your writing lack vigour. Any idiot can see that if something were seen by you it would be seen personally and that Ms Elia’s professional ethics would have to be hers personally. Ditch those redundant adverbs, recast in active voice and save words!
“Ms. Elia’s professional ethics that I have seen are distressingly deficient.”





I observed first hand how Ms. Elia and the head of Professional Standards, Linda Kipley, manufactured a case of misusing school emails by a media specialist friend of mine, Bart Birdsall, apparently to accommodate the country-administrator friend of Ms. Elia’s desire to punish Bart because he, as a gay man, protested from his home computer about the shutdown of county library privilege to gays in educational displays. (67 words – bloody hell!)

That (passive voice) phrase doesn’t do what you want it to do, does it? It was the friend’s desire; most of your readers will stumble over that sentence.





The Professional Standards unit as run by Ms. Kipley for Ms. Elia’s outreach of control of school personnel does not so much promote professional standards as it imposes silence and fear of loss of job for those who speak up..
I advise parallel construction (as does Strunk & White). “… does not so much promote professional standards as impose silence and fear …”

EDITOR J. ALFRED PRUFROCK REIFIES

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2007
EDITOR J. ALFRED PRUFROCK REIFIES

Lee writes here at http://grammargrinch.blogspot.com/2007/09/editor-j-alfred-prufrock-reifies.html:

>What do they think would constitute victory in Iraq, NO COMMA: IT SPLITS A COMPOUND DIRECT OBJECT. and how, precisely, REDUNDANT ADVERB do they intend to achieve it?<


Rubbish. There are two independent clauses.

What do they think would constitute a victory in Iraq
Verb – “do think”
Object of “do think” – what would constitute a victory in Iraq

How, precisely, do they intend to achieve it
Verb – “do intend”
Object of “do intend” – to achieve

And old Vinegartits could tell you that you need a comma to separate two independent clauses.

The "twit" turning point

From Lee's blog, Thursday, July 12, 2007:

"Plea to Oxford Linguistics Faculty:
I had a bone to pick with Dr. Burchfield and discovered that he had gone and died on me. So I kick the can downstream to you guys. You must do something about this twit who heads the American branch of Oxford Dictionary, Jesse Sheidlower. "


In response to one of her diatribes (Dr. Roy Peter Clark of Poynter Institute Takes a Bow here), I wrote:

"Your second explanation about redundant adverbs is just as redundant as the adverbs themselves. Pay attention, you twit."

Her response:

"Call me 'twit' one more time, sugarbritches, and I will cut you out of the loop. A man absent the courage to mount his own blog has no standing to call a woman demeaning names. lee drury de cesare"

Old vinegartits gives it, but can't take it. (I think I need a pet name like "sugarbritches" for Lee as I am now a man with my own blog.)