Certain types of people make me suspicious. For example: people who claim to love reading, but can’t string together a coherent written sentence.[1]
I wonder if they’re trying to seem more cultured or informed than they really are. If they really do “read” a lot, I suspect they’re doing it wrong. Maybe they’re skimming, without actually absorbing anything. Maybe they just ignore the words they don’t understand. Maybe they only read stream-of-consciousness absurdist poetry. There’s just something incongruous about a person who reads a lot but isn’t able to articulate thoughts into written words. I can’t help but suspect there’s a disconnect somewhere.
Most of all, I suspect they need to read more.
- I’m not expecting eloquent, complex, scholarly essays (and I’m not complaining about occasional typos, or not remembering whether it’s “Jimmy and me” or “Jimmy and I.”) I’m talking about basic, junior-high level sentence structure—with nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their proper places—and correctly spelling common words. [↩]