I saw an online article by something called the DC Patriot. Never heard of it, but the article caught my attention because of the atrocious wording of the headline and the nonsensical BS in the opening sentence.
Story here: NYPD Veteran Officer Killed
Headline: “NYPD Veteran Officer Killed by Intoxicated Driver in Queens, Screams: ‘I don’t have to listen to you’ While Being Arrested“
So. The dead cop screams, ‘I don’t have to listen to you’ while being arrested? Seriously? How incompetent do you have to be to put this garbage out there for the public to read?
Then, in the opening sentence we have: ‘The accused killer of a Queens NYPD officer hit in a horrific hit-and-run crash, boozy on vodka, wine and weed, had no drivers license and even less remote when she was arrested on Tuesday after a mile-long chase by police.’
What? ‘And even less remote’? WTH? I am no journalist. I don’t consider myself to be a writer either. I just like to blog. Period. I’m sure my posts are rife with all sorts of grammatical errors. But I’m just a 66 yr old great-grandmother with a public school education and two years of community college in the early 1970’s. The people who write the garbage I quoted are supposed to be professionals for goodness sake!
I have a sneaking suspicion that so called journalists are writing their articles on their so called ‘smart’ phones. Does anyone actually sit at a keyboard and type anymore? I learned typing in High School in 1971-1972 and loved it. We had an old manual typewriter at home that I would sit and plink away on for school papers. I even got to use an electric typewriter on occasion over the years.
I hadn’t done any typing of any kind for decades until we bought our first desktop computer, a Gateway, in February 2001. We got it all set up and running and I sat down at the keyboard and bam! It all came back to me. I didn’t have to look at the keys to type even after all those years.
One of the reasons I like blogging is because I can sit at my laptop and type. I don’t own a ‘smart’ phone. We don’t get reliable reception out in the boondocks so what’s the point in spending hundreds on a phone I only use when I’m away from home anyway? I’ve got a Kindle, two of them in fact, and I’ve tried posting to social media from it and it’s a colossal pain in the ass. I learned to type at an early age, it’s what my fingers prefer and that is what I will continue to do.
I go back and read over what I type before I publish in on my website and correct the errors that I find. I wouldn’t be surprised if I overlook something from time to time. But again, I am not a professional and have never had a single class on writing. I read a lot. I remember quite a bit of grammar from my school years and I get by. Reading garbage like the article I quoted makes me want to go back and do a refresher course. I still have my copy of Harbrace College Handbook. I wonder how many people know what that is these days?
Rural Texas Knitter 