Obama's "The Audacity of Ghastly Grammar and Sucky Syntax"

"The Audacity of Hope" ^ | 07/13/08 | Polarik

[SAJ]

''...Run-on sentences was something that my fourth-grade teacher taught our class how to avoid...

What a very curious sentence to see from an author critiquing someone else's grammar. It appears to be a fourth-grade error of number.

Glass houses and stones, eh?

[counterpunch]

Obama's reading of his book on tape will be a gift that keeps on giving through out the fall. The RNC is holding back until after Obama is officially nominated to really cut loose on him.

[Porterville]

eh... I can’t write worth a crap either.... I don’t like obama because he’s a socialist.

[AlexW]

It is OK. Most Americans have been dumbed down to the point that they will accept any empty suit, no mater how he talks.

There is a good chance that this moron will be the next POTUS.
God bless the USA, but for now, I am happy not to be there.
America is likely to get CHANGE alright. I hope they like it.

[silverleaf]

This book made Obama and Mrs Obama rich and ever more determined to change this mean soulless country.

How does THAT feel? Have a great day!

[SAJ]

Socialist, certainly. More specifically, a neo-Fascist a la Mussolini: he wants control of effectively every means of production, but can’t be bothered with the outright ownership, which would imply his executing some competent maintenance from time to time. Better to have his productive slaves do the maintenance work, right?

[savedbygrace]

And that's not an orphan:

One would think that, by the time he finished Harvard Law School and became a Law Lecturer, that Obama knows how to use appropriate grammar and syntax.

Followed by:

At the very least, Obama has to know even the most basics rules of writing like where to use punctuation (commas, semi-colons, and dashes), conjunctions (and, with), plural nouns, case, separating paragraphs by subject, and, most of all, avoiding run-on sentences.

'Basics' should be 'basic', and there should be a comma after "rules of writing". 'With' is NOT a conjunction.

Though he is probably correct about Obama's grammar problems, his entire critique, other than the hilariously funny title suggestion for Obama's book, is an embarrassment.

[FORTRUTHONLY]

How racist of you to say that, despite of it being true. You must be a Republican [sic].

[pabianice]

Yes, when affirmative action meets Harvard you get degreed incompetents who feel good about themselves...

[MississippiMan]

What’s even more curious is that this book went completely through the editing/proofing/publishing process at a major publisher (Crown, a division of Random House) without being shaped up. Or maybe it WAS worked on, in which case the original manuscript would have been a real doozie, LOL.

MM

[RightWhale]

The entire book is like this abysmal paragraph

Aside from a couple howlers, little is actually wrong with the grammar. The history is the writer's own and is somewhat out of step with other interpretations.

[SAJ]

Yes, your first example is rather a howler, containing as it does both a tense and a mood error. I haven't seen a that pair together in a long while.

However, that said, I'm not really here to shoot the messenger; I just wish the messenger would transmit the message a bit more coherently.

[Sacajaweau]

The problem with his writing...is that what he is saying has been said so many times before....and it is irrelevant today....unless you’re looking for reparations.

[pepsionice]

Its curious...ninety percent of the writers who go via a publisher...would have a big cut and rewrite. After reading the example of paragraph from Obama....that wouldn’t have passed any of my university English instructors. They would have graded this a C-minus, with issues.

[Keith in Iowa]

Yet, to his leftist supporters, who basically lack any original thoughts of their own, OBama's sh*t souns like silk to their ears.

How true.

[Ditter]

I don't intend to EVER read his book, it is the way he speaks that makes me crazy. The hesitation and then the forcing out of the next few words. That guy on Sat. Nite Live can mimic him to a T!

[Petronski]

Change you can count on

Slogans you can dangle a preposition from

[abclily]

‘Run-on sentences’ is a subtopic of grammar.

[xjcsa]

How we speak and how we write is a reflection of our acquired knowledge and our thought processes, and for Obama, these processes are as jumbled as a jigsaw puzzle.

Kids, don't do drugs.