I'm now going to go away and have nightmares about the phrase "ill-fitting mother suit."

And that she was so damn transparent that even the doctor, who's only just met her, felt the need to let her know he was gay. I laughed. But I also cried, for Norma, who is in some ways as batshit as her son. She's just had longer to hide the seams.

Good little engines in those Honda Civics.

I hit a dog in my car once. Yeah. Stone cold sober and not speeding but the guilt was pretty bad, and made worse by the fact the dog was a one-year-old lab puppy. Anyway, I was doing around fifty k and hit it square on and the poor animal was dead before it had stopped spinning away from me. So it *can* be quick and…

Interesting that the word "lazy" occurs to you, since I've always felt that "pretentious," alongside its cousin "gratuitous," is an incredibly lazy form of criticism. It says very little about the object of its scorn, but often says a fair bit more about those who choose to hurl it.

Oh, hey, thanks. I think a few commenters understandably assumed I was being a jerk, since the whole internet grammar cop thing is so annoying. My focus is more positive than that, though; while the whole profession of editing can be seen as massive nitpicking, I see it as honing and improving writing, since I value…

My own highly unscientific sense (read: guess) is that when we read over our own words, we see what we *intended* to write.

Oh, and I do agree with you that taking someone to task IN THE COMMENTS SECTION is obnoxious, sure. But I didn't do that.

It's only a weird argument if you misstate it as you have done here. Anyone can make someone's argument look ludicrous if they characterize it as something it's not. In this case, I now realize you are probably not operating in good faith if you're reducing what I'm saying to an insistence on a single hyphen's…

Yeah, that's fair, up to a point. But if I were a writer who was aware that I regularly made these types of errors, I'd put in a bit of effort into learning how not to. But yes, the writer may well not control whether the site uses copyeditors, or how regularly they're used.

Right. We all start at different places but these things are indeed eminently learnable. We get better with practice. I didn't begin as a good or even particularly competent editor; I learned the trade.

Yes, I agree completely. Comments sections should be off-limits (although I did find it funny on a number of levels that those complaining of pedantry in others gleefully pulled me up on an error of my own, while misreading my motives here). There are many otherwise excellent writers who suck at editing; for them,…

Ha, Muphry's Law. This doesn't undermine my point. If anything it strengthens it: we're all capable of making errors (even editors use other editors when they write), so it's a really bad idea to skip the copyediting, at least in the main article (editors for comment sections is probably taking it to ludicrous…

I really wanted to believe you about running it by an editor later, but as it stands, seventeen hours later and counting, I see no attempts to fix the errors. Is this something you believed was true about AV Club procedure or did you make it up? Genuine question.

Right, but would you prefer to read largely error-free written communication or a piece of writing riddled with obfuscating errors? It's not a "gotcha" thing for me at all. I value writing. In fact, it's not even a feeling of superiority for me, as my entire point is that we're all capable of making errors that reduce…

Essentially, if you're gonna write for a large audience, you need to have your shit together as a communicator, is all I'm really saying.

Oh, sure. But in that vast timespan, we didn't produce the Upanishads or Hamlet, either. Language, for good or for ill, has become the thing that defines us now. It's probably changed the wiring in our brains, even. And yes, nitpicking drives me crazy, too. But this isn't nitpicking. This review is far too filled with…

Ha! Right, fair enough.

I really don't mean to be "the grammar police," but I do believe in clear communication, because language is hella crucial for all of us humans. I'm not coming at this as a pedant, but as an editor by profession. When people write sloppy English, it leaps out at me, because that's my training, not because I'm trying…

Well, that's a theory.