PHILISTINES

That's what these people are. Gah. I'll be surprised if I can even form a coherent sentence amid the sputtering.

I've had an evaluation report from a third job I took on, edited, by special editing staff at the DMR (now DDS). If they were good at being grammar-nazis, that would be one thing, but they are not. OH, how they are not!

I'd give you a precise example--in fact, I will, next time I have the "edited" report in front of me and haven't cast it away in disgust--but suffice it to say, it's terrible. And I mean TERRIBLE--correcting sentences that actually had meaning in English to sentences that do not, and never will.

As in: adding the conjunction "xxx; because, xxx" WHICH IS NEVER CORRECT and is even less correct in this case, if that's possible; using four-syllable words where a two-syllable one works just as well; ADDING THE PHRASE "IN ORDER TO" AS THOUGH THERE WERE A QUOTA OF "IN ORDER TOS" NEEDING TO BE FILLED.

OMG. WHAT IS THEIR PROBLEM. (That's not a question, really, and so doesn't require a question mark.)

Okay, deep breath. I think I can survive this, if only because they hold back some of your pay on this job until you send the report in (knowing that most people will end up never writing it, they say, but now I suspect it's because most people know what the "editors" will do to it), and because it's not, by any stretch of the most fertile imagination, a work of art.

Still: Philistines.


(While I search out exact details on the grammatical atrocities committed against my report, go here and be appalled by the photos of babies in weird-o outfits a la Anne Geddes, who's always freaked me out, and in baskets and whatnot--looking as shocked and horrified to be there as you are to see them there. I don't understand why anyone would hire this photographer on the basis of these photos, no matter what the Maritime Fall Fair Photo contest says.)