I am a criminal. The type of criminal that screws up grammar, I butcher spelling, apostrophes, contractions, and modifiers. I throw commas around like they’re candy and I’m in a parade. I’m sure there a tons of mistakes I make on the regular as I am no English major, and WordPress has no spellcheck.
On Monday this criminal, called Ruthie, had the chance of a lifetime: the chance to be police cheif of word crimes. Who knew such sweet redemption could be possible?
I’m in a technical writing course this semester, and we’ve been covering all the classic grammar “crimes”. It’s been quite apalling realizing the number of them I commit. This entire blog must now be edited- Huzzah!!!
Being the great teacher that she is, our professor set up a fun mystery for us to solve during classtime this past Monday.Throughout the hallway were many crime scenes (peices of paper with gramatically incorrect sentences). Whoever solved the most crime would be declared our new police chief of grammar.
…. Oh how I wanted that title…
We ventured out into the hallway, paper and pen ready, prepared to get our detective on. There was a problem though; the evidence had been tampered with. There was not a crime scene in sight.
….Who could have done it?
…….Janitorial staff?
………. There weren’t any crime scenes in the trashcans. (us good detectives checked.)
We had gone from a game of word crimes to a real case of thievery.
Our professor went to talk to custodial staff. She wanted to know what happened to those crummy sentences of hers, and she meant business. It was quite a wise move on her part, almost as smart as checking the trashcans.
She found out that they were in fact the culprits who tampered with our evidence. Turned out there was fear our word crimes were actually threats or something. The staff was considering calling the real life police. They were probably quite relieved to find out it was all just a game for our grammatical betterment. (note to self: Clemson’s staff rocks!)
Ended up all was well. We had significantly less time to solve our word crimes, but I think class was a pretty fun adventure anyways. Needless to say, I did not win police chief. If you frequent this blog, that won’t surprise you too much..
Ruthie Rambles 