by “The Anno-Hater” (Anonymous)
Dear Editor,
I am a learned scholar with three masters in English Studies, Comparative Literature, and Rhetorical Discourse, as well as a PhD in Personal and Academic Perfection from Rushmore University—just in case you needed to know my credentials upfront. (I am currently also a student at Centre College pursuing my first undergraduate degree.)
I can see that my own copy of the previous edition of the Cento, which I so kindly annotated for you in perfect black ink from my German fountain pen, did not reach you. Ergo, I will generously relay my advice and recommendations to you in this letter. Please read carefully: your previous issue not only deeply offended me, but also contained unacceptable grammatical and content-related errors, as a result of, I can only imagine, not proofreading your articles.
Particularly, your previous edition contained the article “How to Decorate Your Dorm.” In this “piece”, your writers discuss decorating a dorm using building-centric methods such as glue, tape, pushpins, gum, and off-brand command strips. How you thought this was acceptable to publish, however, is beyond me. Did you ever think that some students—such as myself—live in the sewers, and do not have access to these methods?
(Of course, living in the sewers is a voluntary lifestyle. As I am one of the highest scholars of my calibre, I disdain the paltry company of other feeble-minded human beings such as “Econ-Finance” majors which populate this campus like gnats. Therefore I retire to the sewers as my isolatory abode. The Residence Life Office, of course, charges me extra for this, but I do not mind.)
However, beyond the exclusionary nature of the article, let me enumerate several grammatical and structural issues I espied within its sentences, which is unbecoming for a student newspaper:
- The bit that reads “How many times have you awoken to a crash because a picture has fallen? Not with glue,” makes no sense. You should have said “not because of glue,” because glue would be the hypothetical cause of the picture falling. Choose your words more carefully.
- You use the word “plethora” to describe the many objects to which tape can be affixed. Please take this word out; I do not know what it means.
- Decapitalize “Command Hooks” throughout the article. It is not a proper noun.
- Periods should appear inside parentheses, not outside of them; how you missed this is mind-boggling.
- Toward the end, there are two sentences summarizing your data findings about gum being used as an adhesive: “Our team has determined that gum is an adequate tool for pasting flimsier decorations up and a cheaper option than putty. The data does reveal the falls are more frequent than they would like and reapplication may be necessary, but as a cheap option, we’ve sacrificed quality for quantity (a common theme at Centre).” The second sentence is a run-on sentence and complete incoherent gibberish. Also, who’s the “they” you refer to? I am not rereading the sentence before it to find out. Revise.
- As the final line of the article, you say, “Good luck on your decorating, Centre. We all know it won’t be done until Christmas break.” Remove the use of the contraction, “won’t”; this is informal and inappropriate.
As a general note, I could not help but feel like the article took too long to say its point. I had to read all 500 words of the article, from beginning to end, to understand what it was saying, which is absurd. This should not be the case. The Cento, as a newspaper for all, should cater to all methods of reading comprehension, including my favorite—skimming.
Speaking of catering: once again I must point out how you are not being inclusive of the entirety of campus by not thinking about the geniuses who live in the sewers, such as myself, within your work. After all, I do know better than you; I am unburdened by the society of “friends” and commune with the literature of the great ones, such as Ayn Rand, regularly.
I hope this is informative feedback, especially considering that the editing teams of the Cento are incapable of catching these errors in the free time of their busy student schedules. Of course, I have no intention to join the student paper.
If you’re not able to get your articles into shape—well, The Writing Center is open from 7-11 on Sundays through Thursdays. Thank me later.
Sincerely,
“The Anno-Hater”