Letters to the Editor

This letter is associated with the following article:
What kind of language do you expect when discussing Iraq?
  • "Grammar jerkoffs"?? Did Momma's Widdle Darlin' flunk Freshman Comp?

    Look, dumb-as-shit: The person who put this headline together is a professional writer. The person who let it get by is a professional editor. If you do not reflexively use the genitive apostrophe correctly, well, fine, since you are not a professional and, judging by your remark, you are also, as someone clever once said, dumb as shit. But most literate people don't overlook baseline usage problems in their own writing and especially in that of people who are paid to do it correctly and to put their words on display. It's not as if we are quarreling over the ideas (you know, those things that make your head hurt) in Salon--this ain't the right time for a quibble.

    But, yes, you are correct: I am a grammar jerkoff. Nothing gets me going quite like imagining Lynne Truss in body-hugging leopard-skin Spandex (unless it's William Strunk and E.B. White going at each other with horsewhips--grrrrr!)