So as an additional source of income, my lovely companion is a freelance editor for the University of Pretoria. This means that students (and sometimes lecturers) can send her their thesis for editing. This involves checking grammar, spacing, referencing and all sorts of other weird and mysterious things. And because of her thoroughness she is quite popular. Sometimes too popular! There are times where she has such a large workload that I have to step in and assist. Don't look at me like that! I am a trained proofreader, among other things! Now usually I don't mind assisting her, but there are times, like last night, when we come across a student who has heard about this thing called grammar, but doesn't really know or care how it works. Some of his sentences left us like this.....
You sense that he is trying to communicate, but you just can't figure out what he is trying to say! There are sentences that just end mid-sentence. Others have so many different thoughts crammed into one that at some point we were convinced he was gurgling with drain water or snorting baby powder.
Don't get me wrong, my lovely companion has edited for students who have written absolute masterpieces. Beautiful sentences, great ideas! In some cases it was so well written that you could easily form a picture in your mind. You could see exactly what they meant! And it is awesome! But some, like our unfortunate friend last night, leave you wondering whether they might be the Mad Hatter in disguise. When faced with such blatant disregard for the English language, there is but one facial expression that you can have when reading their work......
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