Attention: Lynne Truss

Argh oh my goodness, I know Ms Colloff is marginally terrifying and not the sort of person that, as a student, you would really want to see outside of school, but I would have given up a posession of moderate worth for her to be here in the office with me today! This is because of a small dispute which came up over grammar in the Newsletter we're writing at the moment - I say we, but actually they haven't asked me to do my own article which is annoying for me and stupid of them becasue I'm better at writing than both Martin and Lois. I don't mean to boast, we all have our strengths - like Lois is better at organising things than Martin or me and Martin's best at doing promotional, creative stuff. I'm just better at writing. So the Newsletter was manically written today by those two in time for yesterday's deadline to be not too far gone, while I was sitting at my desk with not much of importance to do. The first draft of the Newsletter was finished by Lois (who wrote most of the articles) and handed to Martin and me for editing.

I made grammatical corrections.

They were rejected.

AAAARGG!! They couldn't accept that our projects should be referred to in the third person singular rather than the third person plural, i.e. 'Helping Hands gives thanks' rather than 'Helping Hands give thanks'. It's not that many hands which help are giving thanks, as is written in the second version, but that the organisation Helping Hands, one body, is giving thanks, as in the first version. But noooooo, they had to be confused by the plural pro-noun. Grrrr. So they wouldn't change it to the correct way of writing and I really could have done with Ms Colloff to be horribly sarcastic and correct them in her ruthless, incredulous way. Well it was really Lois who didn't want to change it because of course she wrote it, so it's perfect. She even got stroppy when I suggested that it would be more appropriate to write "...can buy me medicine, food and care" instead of "...can buy me medicine, food and hugs". I mean, who buys hugs? No one! But you can buy care, for example at a nursing home or a private hospital. Gah.

So as we were debating what the correct grammar was, which consisted of me telling them what it was (politely though, because I'm not good with conflict!) and Lois practically laughing down everything I was saying because "Helping Hands is" didn't sound right, I was asked to go into the other room and send a fax. Lois always sends the faxes, she just wanted me out of the room. Grr. Sly. Anyway, when I came back in about 5 minutes later they had decided to go 50-50 on the grammar (but Martin admitted he just did what Lois had told him to do). They could get that for Isle of Hope it should be "Isle of Hope wishes" but still thought it should be "Helping Hands wish". NoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! *cries* So now they've sent it to the printers with half of it correct, the other half abysmally wrong! It's not even the same rule throughout the article anymore!

What is the point of me being given the article to edit if they won't accept my corrections? But meh, it's their decision in the end and all I can hope to do is to influence it. The reason for this post being to bitchy (for which I apologise :s) is that throughout the whole thing I kept really calm even though correct grammar is something I will fight to my death for, so have only just vented my annoyance. I think it's important to try and stay collected in situations like this and not be selfish and angry/rude/whatever, afterall that's what Jesus would do! *waves wristband*

But I have to go because I'm about half an hour late out of the office due to writing this!

xxx

Disclaimer: there may be grammatical errors in my blog which I haven't noticed - if so please don't think I'm a hypocrite. It's just that this blog is not being printed and sent to thousands of people. The Newsletter is. Therein lies the difference.