Dear Mr. de la Rocha:
I would like to say from the outset that I am a huge fan of yours. Rage Against the Machine's self-titled album is an absolute masterwork, and you deserve to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Thank you for contribution to the zeitgeist.
I was happy to see that you published your first piece as a Huffington Post contributor the other day. It's about time the mainstream media finally came around and recognized that you are a voice to be reckoned with. I was also happy to see that you got top billing. You are way more of a celebrity than that other guy, and you definitely deserve to have the bigger name in lights.
I suspect that you delegated the task of writing the piece to the other guy, however, because the piece contain multiple instances of multiple grammatical errors. For example, it doesn't hyphenate phrasal adjectives consistently. It should read "fear-mongering state governments," not "fear mongering state governments," and "civil-rights organizations," not "civil rights organizations." The piece also neglects to set off independent clauses joined by a conjunction with a comma and fails to use the serial comma consistently. But the gravest error occurs when the piece abuses the semi-colon in the last paragraph with that quote from Batman Begins. A series of terms or phrases can only be set off with semi-colons if the series follows a colon, and the letter following a semi-colon must always be a lower-case, not capital, letter. As written, the sentence breaks both of these rules. It should instead read something like this, starting out with the rhetorical tautologies set off with commas, not semi-colons ("So long as there is injustice, so long as...," etc., etc.), following the series with a comma, not a period, and then finishing the buildup with the strong declarative ("The resistance of organizations, artists, writers, and governments will continue.").
The piece makes other errors, but I won't belabor the point by listing them all here. I will instead just conclude by offering my services as an editor, free of charge. The next time you delegate a writing task to someone of questionable skills or are just too busy making the greatest rock 'n roll that the greatest country in history—the United States of America—has ever seen, it would be my honor if I could help you put the finishing touches on your image and the polish on your work as you expand your audience reaching out to the bourgeois as a Huffington Post contributor or in any other capacity. In closing, thank you for your time and attention, and thank you for the rock 'n roll.
Looking forward to your next album,
Tommy Leibowitz
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