Boston Globe Commits Crime Against Grammar

[gnomi]

I was reading an article in the Boston Globe this morning about a school bus driver being fired for disciplining a student on the bus. The article discusses, in part, other bus drivers who were disciplined for one reason or another. And then there's this paragraph:

Last year, state lawmakers renewed calls for requiring monitors on school buses or for bus drivers to be trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation after a 5-year-old Marlborough boy choked on a school bus and died.

(emphasis mine)

I realize it's a tragic incident, but I couldn't help giggle at the visual.

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

If you're going to try to swallow and entire school bus without chewing, you pretty much get what you deserve.

[madfilkentist]

The headline is poor. He wasn't fired for disciplining a student; he was fired for abandoning one.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

That's like the headline in the Lexington paper that read something like:

"Woman found strangled by police"

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

well, if it were a toy school bus...

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

um, I think that should be if it was. *blushes* my English grammar is leaving me the more Hebrew I speak. *sigh*

[madfilkentist]

No, "if it were" is correct, since you're presenting a counterfactual hypothesis.

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

oh, *thank* you. I had 'If I were a rich man' going through my head as I was typing, and still what I originally had just didn't sound right. It's good to remember that sometimes my ear is just wrong.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yay!
*appreciation of subjunctive*

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

The subjunctive is a lie. :-)

As for that boy, he was probably a terrorist.

(You know the joke about the stupid terrorist that tried to blow up a bus, but burnt his lips on the exhaust?)

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, terrible, terrible. ::snickers uncontrollably::

[betra.livejournal.com]

That is some bad grammar right there. o0

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

And, pumping up the blamethrower: I feel like writing a nasty letter to the editor of the paper. How dare he make me laugh at such a horrific event? I am emotionally scarred! I demand restitution!

("I demand restitution" cannot help but be in Sally Brown's voice; I shall blame someone else for that, too.)

[half-double.livejournal.com]

Kids these days! In my day, everybody knew that no one under seven could swallow a school bus.

[cellio]

Gee, and I thought my calcium tablets were a challenge to swallow...

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Hamish McTavish Jr?