Recently I noticed something disturbing with the students that I have been working with, and that is a spate of assignments from their teachers that ask them to fill out a grid form with QUOTES from their sources.
*sigh*
C’mon people, who is proofreading these things?
Quote is a verb, as in TO QUOTE.
QUOTATION is a noun, as in this is a QUOTATION from John Lennon, “All you need is love.”
So, students and your teachers, you should not be filling your paper with QUOTES, you should be filling it with QUOTATIONS, and you shouldn’t be doing that in any case, because you should be paraphrasing, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Grammar pet peeve of the day.
I’m not perfect; I make mistakes too, and I seldom see my own errors, which is why everyone needs editing, but among a college full of English teachers, many with PhDs, somebody should be giving their course materials a proofread. Write once; edit twice.
That is all.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled good day. 😉
