To contact the school over comma splices?

[CocktailQueen]

Or am I being too pedantic?

The school newsletter usually has a few typos, but this week the head teacher's letter but had about 8 comma splices. I winced every time.

Wibu to email her - we are acquaintances out of school - and let her know in a friendly way? I don't know if the office staff type it or she does...

Examples are

We love learning in our school, this week I was delighted to see x and y...

I hope you enjoyed the Xmas service, many thanks to the vicar...

Thank you for all your cards and Christmas gifts, we do appreciate them...

Moln - google 'should though have a comma before it'

dontrun - unbelievable - and also scary - that kids can go through the whole education system and get to uni without being able to use capital letters

Frances - interesting. Not sure. I don't see why not. I would like to know if I was making mistakes so that I could correct it. I wouldn't want people reading things I'd written and judging them.

Tomato - why on earth not? We all have different standards.

Save your fire for something more worthwhile, like the pernicious reflexive error
Isn't that some kind of bowel problem.

Btw, levels went two years ago.

OP - I am driven nuts by school correspondence containing basic grammar and punctuation errors. I contact the school when my own child's correct grammar and punctuation is miscorrected by ignorant teachers.

It's not the comma before though that's confusing. It's the use a a colon after though (and that has a comma before it).

Looks awkward and therefore looks wrong. It maybe grammatically correct but if the vast majority of those reading a sentence looks awkward it's poorly structured sentence.

Tomato - why on earth not? We all have different standards.

I guess I should consider myself lucky that my standards are so low and comma splices don't cause me enough pain or distress to make me wince.

No they don't do it for me either Ego. I will give a slight twitch if someone sticks a random "but" into a sentence. That shouldn't be legal

I've been reading a new style guide, The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker, (he's North American, admittedly). He calls purists who obey usage rules because usage rules must be obeyed “sticklers, pedants, peevers, snobs, snoots, nit-pickers, traditionalists, language police, usage nannies, grammar Nazis and the Gotcha! Gang. In their zeal to purify usage and safeguard the language, they have made it difficult to think clearly about felicity of expression and have muddied the task of explaining the art of writing."

It's a great book.

Yes, I read an interesting article he wrote recently and I agree with him Can't remember what they are now but am sure there were quite a few mistakes in it as well

Yes, Pinker is controversial!

Oh no, someone else coined my law first! Dagnam!

And yes, IIRC Pinker fundamentally disagrees with Chomsky which causes some...err...conflict

I'm a professional writer and editor and even I use comma splices in casual communication. Is a newsletter casual, or should it be carefully proofread? I don't know.

I do know that writing to them about this will make you look like an absolute fool, so on that basis YABU.

I read Pinker's article with interest.

To be fair, his accusations of pedantry probably don't include misspellings or any of the other glaring errors that typically feature in school newsletters.

I think that his 'felicity of expression' argument is compelling, but it's a bit like Emily Dickinson; superior writers probably can afford to take liberties with language in a way that us ordinary people can't.

How could a school newsletter be considered anything other than formal writing?

Of course it should be carefully proofread.

2/10

Obviously I'm a fully paid up member of the Splice Girls, love a good comma splice, me.

"mindlessly enforcing rules that had been laid out in some ancient style book as if they were the Ten Commandments." (from the above linked Guardian article)

I feel this covers how I feel about so called Grammar Nazis. There's a tipping point where a person's zealous attitude towards grammar becomes more about showing off than concern about the language.

We've had examples of posters in this thread who have written in a style that, I feel, was grandiloquent (purposefully ironic choice of word). Their sentance structure was more (or completely) 'see how marvellous my understanding of language is' and less (or not at all) about caring if their writing actually made sense.

Going back to the OP. It wouldn't be unreasonable to tell the head, but the way you tell her could be unreasonable.

My so called Grammer Nazi I mean those that insist on an old archaic way, such as "an hotel" or not ending a sentence with a preposition, and sneer at those that don't use or know these rules. I'm certainly not talking about basic spelling, punctuation and grammar.

A Grammer Nazi, to me, is a person who writes to feel superior rather than to communicate. Same as a person who frequently uses 'big words' knowing that others probably won't know them. Such posts are very easy to spot; they are convoluted and unclear.

I feel this covers how I feel about so called Grammar Nazis

I nearly posted about this a few posts up, then self-policed in case I was being over-sensitive. But seeing the phrase used again, I've braced myself to comment. I find the term Grammar Nazis hugely offensive. The Nazis were dedicated to carrying out genocide and 'purging' Europe of anyone who didn't fit their idea of racial and ideological purity. Comparisons with Nazis are almost always overblown and they belittle what the Nazis actually did.

I confess to a dislike of comma splices, misplaced apostrophes and other basic errors in written English. When they appear in large numbers in formal communications such as school newsletters, I tut loudly to myself and think the writer should know better. I don't feel the need to identify all the offending writers, round them up, brutalise, ill-treat and then murder them. All things in proportion!

OP, if your relationship with the HT is good enough for you to point out the problem without causing undue offence, go ahead. Hopefully she'll understand that you're simply protecting her from further professional embarrasment. However, if you don't have a pretty solid relationship (and the term 'acquaintances' suggests that you don't) then I'd leave it alone.

It's Godwin's Law morning.

The use of Nazi anything suggests that all sense of proportion has been lost.