Aaaand what abominations are in this week’s haul? Step right up! The Grammar Cop invites you into her lair to see them! 😀

As in our last FF post, this one shows you all the mistakes found in a SINGLE ARTICLE (in a different weekly rag newspaper from last week).

1. “…articles that affect change and make people’s lives better whether it be…”
2. “…in a calm and intelligent fashion can affect change whether it be…”
3. “…of their communities whether it be…”
4. “Sainte Anne de Bellevue got some good news when the city of Montreal recently purchased land that will be saved from development was a good example of how to do things right.”
5. “…the lesson I have learned from covering the large territory is that be wary of unilateral decisions that are…”
6. “There are at least three mayors in the last few years whose long…”
7. “Recently, there was a mayor that, once elected, did not…”
8. “There was a professional power point presentation along with…”

The corrections:

1. When you make change happen, the word to use is effect with an e: articles that effect change…
2. Same thing – can effect change… and can we please ditch the horrible construction, “whether it be”?! Notice that in numbers 1 to 3, the writer used the same phrase three times, “whether it be”! Sorry, but it’s just awful. It’s bad enough seeing it once, but three times? What is so darn hard about saying: whether this or that or the other?
3. See #2! 😠
4. First of all, the place name is written incorrectly. In proper French (it is a French name after all), it should be Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. (The writer suffered from hyphen-o-phobia there.) Second of all, as written, the sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly, when the writer reached the latter part of the sentence, he’d forgotten what he’d written before. I would amend it this way: …recently purchased land that will be saved from development. This was a good example of how to do things right.
5. Same problem here as in #4. Writers must learn to re-read what we’ve written so we don’t end up with a mess like this: “…is that be wary of…,” which is not grammatical. The fix? How about: …lesson I have learned from covering the large territory is to be wary of…  Or: …territory is that one must be wary of…
6. Here we have a simple error in tense. It should say: There have been at least three mayors in the last few years whose long…
7. The problem here is “that.”  When you are describing a person, we must use the pronoun, who. (That is for things, not people.) Thus: …there was a mayor who, once elected…
8. Obviously no “professional” wrote this sentence! What on earth is “power point”? The name of the software is PowerPoint.

All these gaffes were in an article no more than 900 words long. For a “professional” writer they are unforgivable. Need I add that no proofreader works at this rag newspaper?