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1

Badly Written, Badly Spoken / The Boat is sinking

« on: July 13, 2010, 06:09:17 PM »

I take the ferry to school every day, and I always pass by this sign. It says, "It is prohibited by law to take out of the boat lifesaving apparatus except for intended use."



To be honest, I had to read it a good six times to get what it was trying to say.

"Out of the boat" is misplaced, but that's an easy fix. What I don't know is where "except for intended use" fits into the puzzle -- or for that matter, what the "intended use" is. Plus, couldn't they have just put "life vests" or "life jackets" instead of the pompous "lifesaving apparatus"? And, "prohibited by law"...? 

2

You Asked Me This Question / Can I just burn our English book already?

« on: July 07, 2010, 12:44:01 AM »

Hi there,

In our English class, we were forced to buy an English book written by the professors of the college in which I study. I have no problem with that and the fact that the number one rule at school is "nothing is compulsory," but the thing is that it's terribly written. I lost two points off an exercise because of a 'stray' adverb.

In the chapter passage it says: "It takes three whole days to read the English dictionary" (or something like that).

But in the True or False exercise, it says, "It would take nearly three days to read the English dictionary."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't "whole" and "nearly" two different things?

And here's another brilliant one:

"1. English continues to grow through borrowing, which means ______.

a. inventing
b. buying
c. acquiring
d. lending"

I was convinced the correct answer was "c. acquiring." Imagine my surprise when our English prof said it was "d. lending."

College may be all too new for me but even I know that lending and borrowing don't mean the same thing.

Furthermore, upon inspection (i.e., visually editing the book and leaving proofread marks), the monstrosity should not have been published and forced upon the minds of students in the college I go to.

Now, how would a freshman student like me go about fixing this (if the question is at all appropriate where I posted this)?