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Don't fuck with the English teacher.

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 1:22 am
by Gob
Image

Re: Don't fuck with the English teacher.

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 3:00 am
by MajGenl.Meade
"I believe that my classmates will agree when I say this next statement" is problematic.

Surely, the writer is not 'saying' anything - he is 'writing'. I suppose he might be forecasting that should he 'say" the next statement, then his belief is that it would receive general agreement. However, he seems unlikely to be clever enough to reason in that manner.

Secondly, the 'agreement' that he believes will occur is not defined. He means of course that they will agree with the next statement but the sentence may equally imply that would busy themselves agreeing that fish is better than chalk for lunch while he is in the process of making the statement.

Clearly, he should have written something similar to: "I believe that my classmates would agree with the following statement". 'Will' is changed to 'would' since it is not clear that the statement either has been shared, is being shared or will be shared with said classmates.

Yrs
Maggie

Re: Don't fuck with the English teacher.

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 4:09 pm
by Sue U
Proofreading takes five minutes and keeps you from looking stupid.
Not sure it would have helped in this case.