How can you not????? I'm pretty sure it's a Rule, anyway.

If a blogger's rant about poor grammar in published material contains grammar errors, should a reader point them out?

It's for their own good! Otherwise, how will they learn?

Hey tumblrs, I'm pretty sure Thursday or Friday is going to be Flawless Ladies Day on the blog (because of reasons), so if you have anyone I should include, send 'em in!

If they're being smug and self-righteous, it's a moral imperative. Or, yanno, if it's really fucking funny.

lisah, I'm so sorry about Uncle Bud. (I've always loved his name.) He had a good, long, happy life with you.

Man, that micropreemie story is just amazing. I haven't listened to the Radiolab piece but I read all three parts of the story from the Tampa Bay Times at my desk this morning and nearly lost it more than once. It's written by the mother, and she is, incidentally, a wonderful writer. It's a very moving, thoughtful piece.

Among other things, the rant contains the following, which is chock full of singular-plural inconsistencies:

As a writing teacher, I used to make it clear to my students that while it was certainly important that they have good solid ideas backed up by solid evidence in support of those ideas, they could have the best idea EVER and it wouldn’t be much use if no one could understand it because they were hacking their way through a forest of grammatical errors to get to it.

Also, I had to hack my way through that word forest.

Maybe it's meant to be an ironic object lesson?

Ginger, not to mention getting lost in all those clauses.

I am so exceptionally frustrated right now. There is a certain lack of confidence that is roadblocking left right and centre, and a lot of it seems to involve distrust of me.

But I don't discount incompetence.

We need to A. Why are we doing it that way? Because all the other ways don't achieve the goal. I don't understand the steps. These are the steps, just like the 15 prior times. I don't understand the steps. These are the steps (in a different way) that a senior developer decided on and wrote out. I don't understand the steps. Here is a senior developer, talk to him about it. The senior developer has said not to do it that way. [speaks to senior developer] No, he's good with doing it this way. I don't understand the steps. Here are the steps (in a third way, with pointers), vouched for by the senior developer. I don't understand the steps.

So now we're delaying the change for two weeks because she's dragged another senior developer into it (I think I must have gotten rogue cooties on the first one) and we'll miss all the deadlines.

I tried to speak to my manager in general terms, explaining that we don't seem to have someone trusted in a position to make those calls, so can we get someone? We can't hire, fine--why don't we assign it to someone? No one has volunteered, she says. No one knows it's there to volunteer for.

The answer to that is to keep the hole and delay the change. Since we can't get rid of the incompetent developer, can't we make someone coping for her part of the process, instead of something that keeps blowing up at the last minute? I would kill to know what she says about me behind my back.

I will take the training and be the subject matter expert, if it just MAKES THINGS HAPPEN. We're back into that cycle of non-delivery.