My late father worked for a metropolitan newspaper in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In those days, if a typo or misspelling got into the paper, at least a dozen subscribers would call the paper to bring it to the editor’s attention. For readers, this game of “gotcha” was great fun, because it enabled them to pit their intellectual prowess against that of seasoned professionals who cared about their wordcraft. In other words, it was rare for the newspaper to make a mistake with the king’s English. Avoiding such errors was a matter of pride for those who wrote, edited, and published newspapers.
When I was a college freshman in the early 1960s, I was required to take a universally-dreaded class called Freshman English. This involved writing 10 papers over the course of a semester. The instructor was a personage you addressed as “professor” in all circumstances. I didn’t know if she was tenured or not; full, associate, or adjunct; nor did I or anyone else have the temerity to ask. All I know is that on the first day of class she made an announcement that went something like this: “I’ve been teaching this course for ten years, and no student I’ve ever taught has been worthy of an “A” grade on a single paper, let alone for the entire course, so the most you can hope for from this course, in your wildest daydreams, is a “B” grade, and then only if you’re very good and I’m in the right mood.” That’s a paraphrase, but you get the idea. Yes, she took off points for (a) misspellings, (b) incorrect grammar, (c) accidental typos. And Lord help you if you didn’t correctly footnote your sources. I’m not talking half-points, either; a single careless mistake could cost you 5 points off your grade. I remember her hair was always done up in a tight little bun, held in place by a hairclip, and she perpetually wore the frozen facial expression of a security guard. And she always used a red pencil to grade papers.
As did many of my fellow students, I worked nights and went to school days — this particular college had a student body mostly made up of blue-collar factory workers who wanted to become accountants, lawyers, and doctors; believe me, it had a really serious ambience — and so I usually had to write my Freshman English papers in longhand on a standing-room-only city bus, not infrequently while nursing a bad cold and trying to ignore some guy yelling at me that his sick wife needed my seat and if I had any civilized decency I would get up; but I had to refuse, because I couldn’t write standing up on a moving bus, and it was an automatic “F” to turn in a late paper to Professor Tightass, even if only one minute past the deadline. Which, I guess, made me uncivilized, according to the tenets of bus etiquette at the time. I didn’t care; I wanted to pass that class
(It turned out I got one of the two Bs that Professor T. handed out that semester. I disdain bragging, but I feel it’s relevant to mention that I got Bs on all ten papers. Possibly that had never been done before. Considering she flunked half the class, those 10 Bs inflated my 18-year-old ego* very considerably.)
(* It should be noted that subsequent Life Experiences kicked ego out of me completely, which I deem a good thing. As I explain to my friends, “Humility must be a good thing, because it’s so damned expensive.”)
Needless to say, we didn’t have Spell Check in those days, which made my accomplishment all the more impressive. But I’m not here to brag. I’m writing this piece to decry how much academic standards have declined since I took Freshman English.
This has become a pet peeve of mine. Standards? What standards? There are no standards anymore. Today I went on the internet and read an article written by some guy with an advanced degree who used the word “wrought” where he should have written “fraught,” as in, “A world wrought with danger.” Really? Shouldn’t that be, “We have wrought a world fraught with danger.”?
I see this all the time: People with B.A.s, M.A.s, and Ph.D.s who CAN’T SPELL. And don’t get me going about people with J.D.s; they’re among the worst offenders. Before I became a lawyer I used to think you had to be able to speak and write English to be a lawyer in this country; but after 40 years of reading other lawyers’ memorandums and briefs, I know better now.
I want to make a simple plea. If you teach college classes, for God’s sake, PLEASE insist that your students spell correctly, use correct grammar, and use “wrought” and “fraught” properly, so we don’t turn into a nation of illiterates. I know everything moves at light-speed nowadays, and nobody rides buses anymore, much less tries to write college papers on moving buses with runny noses and agitated standup passengers cursing and belittling them, but even if we can’t get the tenured professors to do it, can we at least ask the lowly Teaching Assistants to MAKE students use the English language properly? T.A.s ought to jump on this, because it’s a golden opportunity for them to throw their weight around.
I know my dear old dad up in Heaven, the fastidious-to-a-fault newspaperman, is smiling right now and telling his fellow angels, “That Roger, he’s my boy, I taught him well.” Yeah, he put me up to posting this. Don’t blame this article on me; I’m just following his orders.
(Note: This article has been edited. A copy of the original posting, defaced with red pencil marks, arrived in the mail yesterday. It came in a plain envelope with no return address, but I recognized the handwriting.)