Thursday, December 8, 2011

Lose the Loose

My colleague, Jacob Levy, posted his writing guide for his students, perhaps to make sure he can play the grading drinking game without getting too snockered.  It is a pretty damned good set of instructions.  I kind of wish I had Jacob as an English teacher in high school, but since he is younger than me (true, hard to believe), that would require time travel. 

One can tell that Jacob is a political theorist because he omits the border/boarder confusion that has been pretty common since I started teaching.  Can lead to funny sentences, but unintentionally so.

I was surprised to see Jacob not properly attribute one of his entries: sensual vs sensuous when obviously the source material is here.

I tease Jacob, well, because it is so much fun, and because he fires back so well (usually in the form of paragraphs).  In his guide, he performs a significant public service, for which we ought to be most thankful.

1 comment:

Jacob T. Levy said...

That's funny-- I don't think I've ever seen the boarder/ border problem (and, theorist though I may be, I've taught classes covering nationalism, secession, and federalism, so it could have come up). I'll include it in the next update.

If you had had Jacob as an English teacher in high school, he would have explained to you that the correct verb construction in your third sentence would have been "had had." :-)