Posts Tagged: Parsing
6

At Least Two 'WaPo' Reporters Don't Actually Understand English

Writers at the Washington Post, including Hank Stuever, have taken South Carolina governor Mark Sanford to task for his use of language in yesterday's HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and totally wacko press conference. They wrote: "Note all the passive constructions, the avoidance of first person." Actually, this is wildly inaccurate on both counts, writes Mark Liberman: "I count 180 tensed verbs, of which I can find only four instances of grammatical passive voice." Oh it goes on! I would get all up in this but I didn't go to no college and I'm not very good on parts of speech.