14 March, 2009

My proposed dialect would be an improvement over the AP's

An AP story about how Justice David Souter remains in Washington, D.C. despite clearly disliking the place carries the headline,

Souter, no fan of capital, seems at home in D.C.
I'm sure lots of people will say he's no fan of "capital", but somewhere, someone is insisting that teaching our children how to spell is a complete waste of time because computers can do all the spell-checking we need… which might be true if they had the slightest clue what we're talking about.

My high school English teachers—Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Collins, and Mrs. Haltiwanger, every last one of them African Americans who were justly proud of their precise command of the English language—would be on the warpath upon reading that headline.

No comments: