The Pain of Grammatical Errors

How does anyone expect to be taken seriously in life if they can't even bother to properly punctuate an important class assignment? I attend one of the best high schools in the country, but these kids seem to be barely literate. I'm reading briefs for cases, and I have to stop myself from cringing.

Examples are below, my comments in italics:

• Is The Washington State mitigating factors law a violation of the Eight Amendment's Ban on "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"?

Because Everything must Sometimes be Capitalized, and punctuation goes Outside the Parentheses.

• He went into the School Library and opened fire on the students, causing 4 students to dies and 5 to be brutally injured.

Spell out integers under ten. Since when is a school library a proper noun? Has your English teacher taught you nothing?

• The Court found that he had bipolar disease but was sentenced to death due to the brutality of the crime under Washington State Law.

Murder is only brutal under Washington State Law- it is soft and fluffy in North Dakota. Bipolar disorder is no longer a disorder; it is now a disease. Don't get to close- you might catch it!

• The ruling of the Washington State Supreme Court was incorrect because the

Yes, let's all not finish our own damn thesis statements, what a phenomenal idea!

• In Ten similar Case of Eddings vs. Oklahoma, Eddings was convicted of murder, he was then interviewed by a team of psychiatrists and was proven to have an unstable behavior, he was exempt from the Death penalty due to prior cases like Lockett v. Ohio through individualized consideration of mitigating factors required by the Constitution.

This is a boy who will not pass is SATs, he will never write a word after high school, his college professors will bang their heads against their desks due to the absurd grammar of his general writings.

• Although People who are 18 years old aren't considered to be a minor, this could've also been a factor within this case because the Teen's mind hasn't fully developed.

I want to stop skewering Stanley here, but it just keeps getting worse and worse. In fact, I'm just not going to read the rest. Moving along...

• No 09-_______

Is it really that difficult to fill out the form?

• Is the Washington State mitigating factors law a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

Weirdly, Word auto-corrects this to a question mark outside of the parentheses. Has my grammatical education steered me down the wrong path?

The Phone Rings

I am simultaneously working on my Social Security paper and an English poster about the color green, so I ignore it.

Shelby answers, then comes over to my room.

"Tea, phone."

"Okay, who is it?"

"I dunno." Her eyes slide shiftily back and forth. "It sounds like a guy."

I roll my eyes and accept the phone, expecting it to be an overtired female whose voice she didn't recognize.

"Hello?" I say.

"Uhhh, hi," says the voice on the phone. Shockingly enough, it actually sounds male.

"Who is this?" I ask.

"Stanley," he replies. Stanley was in Gretchie's and my spanish class in eighth grade. He sat in front of me, and he left his gym shirt on under his t-shirt so you could see the writing through the back, and he smelled as if he didn't use deodorant. I haven't noticed a stench this year, but I had told him we were working on the same topic, and I'd gone through his outline with him after Mrs. Hirten gave him some horrific score to explain what he'd been doing wrong.

The call lasts about thirty seconds, in which I say, yes, writing a paragraph about the changing life expectancy since 1935 is absofreakinglutely fine and he says okay then, I'll see you in school on Monday.

I hope he doesn't make a habit of it.