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Tuesday, March 18, 2003 Page: 3A
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of reading two piles of documents submitted to
the newspaper.
There was a collection of Best and Brightest scholarship contest
applications from area high school seniors, which I enjoyed. They prove our
schools to be much more than diploma mills.
We have kids who not only make the grades, but express themselves
eloquently and clearly, usually with perfect punctuation, grammar and
spelling.
A week later I perused a pile of campaign announcements sent in by
candidates for local school boards, which I found to be even more
entertaining.
Believe me, our students, not our candidates, deserve to be called our Best
and Brightest.
The Patriot Proud Team – five incumbent candidates on the Pittston Area
School Board – announced its campaign kickoff party in a March 4 press release
that really stood out.
It caught my attention because it, among dozens, was perfect. Perfect
spelling. Perfect punctuation. Perfect capitalization. Every “i” was dotted;
every comma was in place.
They improved their odds against errors by submitting a terse 57-word
announcement. That’s two fewer words than one candidate wrote in a single
rambling sentence in announcing her candidacy for a Wilkes-Barre Area School
Board seat.
Not pregnant or dead
I don’t want to be a comma quibbler and pick the press releases to death.
I’m not always the goodest at grammar neither.
Plus, the ability to write an error-free press release is just one of many
things to consider when selecting a school board member.
Let’s just say that every clear, concise, correct campaign announcement
that appeared in our newspaper received a helping hand from a kindly copy
editor.
Oh, except for one.
The following excerpt from a press release led to everything but a baby
shower for the wife of Wilkes-Barre Area School Board candidate Louis Elmy.
“Louis (and his) wife Sandra have two children, one of which is in the
Wilkes-Barre School System and another child that is on her way.”
We interpreted that to mean Mrs. Elmy was pregnant, and translated it as
such.
Friends and neighbors congratulated her on the news. And I imagine that
more than a few acquaintances – the ones who didn’t catch the correction –
still feel insulted that they had to read about it in the newspaper. They
needn’t be.
What Elmy meant was his youngest daughter, age 2, is “on her way” to
elementary school. Sandra isn’t pregnant.
But most days, we make more saves than a goalie with a performance
incentive in his contract.
In fact, we kept one candidate from writing her own obituary. If published
as presented, it may have led careless readers to conclude she was dead.
The release jumped from present to past tense, and included sentences like
“She had dedicated her entire career … ” and “(she) had been with our
children for 36 years as both a teacher and administrator.”
Yeah, you read that right. She was a school administrator. Even past
principals aren’t perfect.
Call Jones at 829-7215 or e-mail caseyj@leader.net.