Headmaster's welcome from a website.

[Caroline1852]

"Visitors to the school are struck by the disciplined yet caring atmosphere and the mature relationships between pupils and all who work and live in its attractive grounds. There is a sense of real purpose and harmony based on Christian principles and our traditions, and revealed in such personal qualities as consideration, service and endeavour."

Dear Pedants, please tell me what is wrong with the above.

NOt a pedant but it's incrediably poncy and long-winded.

There's no need to capitalize the 'P' in Pedants

its

The sentences are so long-winded that the references are very unclear imo. The subject of the first sentence is 'visitors', but by the end of the sentence it seems to have shifted to the school. That's why you get confused (or at least I did) when you get to 'its', because you can't figure out what it refers to. The visitors? The mature relationships?

The second sentence is just trying to stuff too much in.

Nah, that's right.

Desi - I knew I had no business on a pedants' thread.
All those poor teachers camping out in the school grounds.
Armadillo - Agree. It is poncy with a capital p.

1. Are the mature relationships between (1) the pupils, on the one hand, and (2) the denizens of the attractive grounds, on the other? Or between (1) the pupils and the workers, on the one hand, and (2) the rather curious category of not-otherwise-characterised school-grounds-inhabitants?

1. What is revealed in the personal qualities? The traditions? The Christian principles? The real purpose and harmony? Or the sense of real purpose and harmony, as distinct from ...

1. Is "service" a personal quality?

It's fairly bosh generally, but I think I wouldn't write off the writer of it. He probably means well & is perfectly nice.

Dear me, I love it in pedants' corner.

I think I'm going to be a bit like Eeyore now, mooching around in this corner with only my thistles for company, muttering 'Fewer! Fewer!' under my breath.

It's just generally badly-written. I'm going to cut and paste it as an example of wordiness for one of my writing classes...

there is no hyphen in 'badly written', UQD. Oh tut tut....

There is a sense of real purpose and harmony based on Christian principles and our traditions, and revealed in such personal qualities as consideration, service and endeavour."

Bad grammar

which school is it then?

It is the work of the headmaster at a top-performing state secondary school. A faith school. The English makes me cringe.

Is the sense of real purpose and harmony... etc. a result of their traditions, or can it be found in their traditions? All very unclear and waffly. Agree that the author has at least tried!
I would also question whether "Endeavour" is a personal quality.

Is it a boarding school?

The author has an OBE. Not for services to grammatical pedantry, clearly.

oh Caroline stop being so mysterious and tell us!

www.stgeorges.herts.sch.uk/welcome/index.htm

Is it "principal"?

St George's.

Sorry, cross-posted (MN hung up on me for a while there).

Lemonaid - How did you know?

I googled "pupils and all who work and live in its attractive grounds" (in quotation marks, so forcing it to consider the search term as a phrase rather than collection of individual words) on the basis that that couldn't be a phrase you'd encounter too often.

Lemonaid. I thought perhaps you might be one of the inhabitants of "its attractive grounds"?

The phrase 'Christian principles' is correct - principal is the guy who is writing it, or would be if he was American.
Perhaps he is, might explain a lot...