Scared

Yes, I'll admit it, I was scared to resume this blog. When I first started it, I plunged in headfirst, but after the break, I was nervous about returning and exposing myself. Not that I was using these posts to bare my soul, not that blogger was becoming my confessional, but because I am aware of some pretty shaky grammar.  I have a daughter and a son-in-law who can truthfully seed their resumes with the word "editor"—and we belong to a family with no hesitations about pointing out each other's shortcomings. I  plead guilty, I do it too!

I don't think I remember being aware of grammar until I started Latin, though I have a nightmarish memory of diagramming a sentence in an English class with Mrs. Doig. Because of all the writing I have had to do throughout my life, I think I can put together a decent sentence, but it is the colons and  semi-colons and quotation marks within quotation marks which throw me for a loop and I had decided not to get too concerned. (Note, I have no trouble with too. Or two, or to.) If I were younger and looking for a job, I would have no problem.

Or so I thought until I read these comments by a CEO which appeared in the Harvard Business Review:

 If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will never hire you. If you scatter commas in to a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building . . .

If you want to read more, go to:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

Although personally I think someone with such a self-proclaimed attention to detail should watch his URLs.