Reader Incorrect Quotes

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms: * Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. * Don't use no double negatives. * Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. * Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. * Do not put statements in the negative form. * Verbs has to agree with their subjects. * No sentence fragments. * Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. * Avoid commas, that are not necessary. * If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. * A writer must not shift your point of view. * Eschew dialect, irregardless. * And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. * Don't overuse exclamation marks!!! * Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. * Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyph-ens. * Write all adverbial forms correct. * Don't use contractions in formal writing. * Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. * It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. * If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. * Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. * Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors. * Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. * Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. * Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. * If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. * Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. * Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. * Always pick on the correct idiom. * "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" * The adverb always follows the verb. * Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives." (New York Times, November 4, 1979; later also published in book form)

So here I am with this double life, one where my grammatically incorrect writing is a nice success with tens of thousands of readers, and another one where my carefully written books are read by a dozen people.

Five Stars! Park Reader -- Great Read! Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2020 I read this twice. The first time I read it so quickly because I couldn't put it down. The second time because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything! There were twists and turns that took me by surprise; my assumptions were incorrect. I enjoy being genuinely surprised.

(From the Q&A with the author at the end of the book.) Have any readers ever asked questions that shocked you? I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped. The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high. I am also shocked by adults who feel that rape is an inappropriate topic to discuss with teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18 and 46 percent of those victims are between the ages of 12-15. It makes adults uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but our inability to speak clearly and openly about sexual issues endangers our children. It is immoral not to discuss this with them.

In January 2016, KPMG issued a public statement after the ‘considerable exposure’ its report had received, which, according to KPMG, should not have happened ‘as the work was being conducted under strict rules of confidentiality which were clearly articulated in our letter of engagement as well as in our findings’.23 According to the statement, KPMG submitted a number of drafts to SARS on which they received feedback and their last report was submitted to SARS on 4 December 2015.24 ‘Our mandate was to undertake a documentary review and did not include interviewing individuals named in the report, nor were they given sight of our findings by us.’25 The KPMG report, which had cost the state R23 million, was therefore not a comprehensive forensic investigation but merely a ‘documentary review’. I also wonder how they could claim they didn’t interview anyone named in the report, when I met with the KPMG team on two occasions, at their request. The report contains sweeping statements, is factually incorrect and there is little or no substantiating evidence in too many instances to mention here. The following examples should give the reader an idea, though, of how taxpayers’ money was spent on a KPMG ‘investigation’. Take, for instance, the following finding: ‘We found no evidence indicating that the Minister of Finance, at the time, new about the existence of the Unit in SARS.’26 Firstly, the word ‘new’ means something entirely different from the word ‘knew’. Secondly, since that ‘unit’ was established there have been three ministers of finance and three deputy ministers and two SARS commissioners and deputy commissioners. Which particular minister was being referred to here, and why leave out the deputy ministers and commissioners?

item 5. It is also beyond the scope of the Standards to define the full range of supports appropriate for English language learners and for students with special needs. At the same time, all students must have the opportunity to learn and meet the same high standards if they are to access the knowledge and skills necessary in their post–high school lives. Each grade will include students who are still acquiring English. For those students, it is possible to meet the standards in reading, writing, speaking, and listening without displaying native-like control of conventions and vocabulary.” As the reader will see in upcoming sections of this book, while being bankrolled by the Federal government, the foisting of the Common Core “State” Standards onto English Language Learners and students with disabilities takes place in an unpleasant manner. Yet, in an equally strange manner, when it comes to getting involved with Gifted and Talented students, the silence is deafening.

Here, in short, is the great danger of reading most novels, romances, and works of fiction. The greater part of them give a false or incorrect view of human nature. They paint their model men and women as they ought to be, and not as they really are. The readers of such writings get their minds filled with wrong conceptions of what the world is. Their notions of mankind become visionary and unreal. They are constantly looking for men and women such as they never meet, and expecting what they never find.

When we coined the expression “All Power to the People,” we had in mind emphasizing the word “Power,” for we recognize that the will to power is the basic drive of man. But it is incorrect to seek power over people. We have been subjected to the dehumanizing power of exploitation and racism for hundreds of years; and the Black community has its own will to power also. What we seek, however, is not power over people, but the power to control our own destiny.

I ALWAYS hated fairy tales. I mean, one, the name is completely demeaning as well as misleading. Precious few of them have actual fairies in them, so I never understood why they were called that in the first place. Two, most of them feature incorrectly named happy endings for all involved. That sucks, because from the very beginning, the reader is encouraged to believe that things will work out for the better in the end. Anyone who knows anything knows that almost nothing ever ends, and when it dose, it rarely ever does so well. And the third and most important reason was that I hated useless people waiting around to be saved.

I ALWAYS hated fairy tales. I mean, one, the name is completely demeaning as well as misleading. Precious few of them have actual fairies in them, so I never understood why they were called that in the first place. Two, most of them feature incorrectly named happy endings for all involved. That sucks, because from the very beginning, the reader is encouraged to believe that things will work out for the better in the end. Anyone who knows anything knows that almost nothing ever ends, and when it does, it rarely ever does so well. And the third and most important reason was that I hated useless people waiting around to be saved.

Fluency CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.4: Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding. *author’s note – This is an amazingly blunt statement as well as an expectation for kindergartners that is based upon just plain ignorance.

We tend to teach comprehension as a series of “reading strategies” that can be practiced and mastered. Unfortunately it really doesn’t work that way. The mainspring of comprehension is prior knowledge—the stuff readers already know that enables them to create understanding as they read. Prior

...to tell the reader what the detective has observed and deduced – but to make the observations and deductions turn out to be incorrect, thus leading up to a carefully manufactured surprise packet in the last chapter.

Programs should always have the form of paragraphs of comments that describe the intention of the program followed by paragraphs of code that implement that intention. All of the formatting should be designed to make readers as able as possible to read the code easily; the compiler doesn’t care. In particular, follow conventions of mathematics and your native language, not those you found in some random language manual. Write the comments first and then write the code, not the other way around. If you don’t know what you want to achieve and why, any code you write is, by definition, incorrect.

The media has published evidence-free accusations, a new and alarming low. It has sourced its stories from people with clear political axes to grind, even as it has worked to hide those motivations from its readers. It’s run with flamingly incorrect pieces and never bothered to acknowledge the errors.