Wag of the Wooden Spoon: McGraw Hill

I have a huge crush on Stephen Colbert.

image from here

Le sigh.

Can you blame me?

 

In honor of my beloved Stephen, whom my unborn son may or may not be named after (okay he's not), I've decided to do a little segment entitled:

Sidenote: try to not be too jealous of my awesome skills in word with clip art and word art...I know...it's badass

 

Today's Wag of the Spoon goes out to McGraw-Hill.

Yes, I'm referring to the textbook company.

 

I'm not some crazy grammar nazi freak enthusiast.  I just expect from publishing companies to publish edited works.  And from companies that publish textbooks that are to be used to teach students, regardless of their age or education level, my standards are a little higher.

For instance, I can deal with the fact that Twilight probably doesn't meet all grammatical rules and codes (and for all of the fans out there, please don't ream me because you loved the plot...I'm speaking only of the grammar use in the book which DOES fall short).

 

What I can't deal with is a textbook publishing company that publishes a textbook RAMPANT with grammatical errors.

That's right, McGraw-Hill.  I'm talking to you.

 

So a WAG OF THE SPOON goes to you today for your repeated articles (the the the...THE WHAT?!  GET TO THE POINT!), misspelled words (really?  who forgets the "h" in "what"?  I realize it's silent but come on!  Who wrote this?) and your poor punctuation.

Here is the final nail in your coffin, McGraw-Hill:

 

"Another way of classifying temperament focuses on the differences between a shy, subdued, timid child and a sociable, extraverted, bold child (Asendorph, 2008; Jerome Kagan (2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009) regards shyness with strangers (peers or adults) as one feature of a broad temperament category called inhibition to the unfamiliar."

Read that as many times as you like.  I had to get both Queenie and mi marido to look over it before mi marido figured it out.

 

Here's the problem:

extraverted, bold child (Asendorph, 2008; Jerome Kagan (2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009) regards shyness

 

If we replace the semi-colon with a closed parenthesis and place a period after it, the scrambled, nonsensical sentence becomes two, coherent sentences.

Thank you, McGraw-Hill, for not just giving me a headache but also making my eyes cross for an unhealthy period of time.

So that is your WAG OF THE SPOON.