I very much wish I could say that the glaring grammatical error in my e-mail blast of Friday afternoon, asking for volunteers to help the Network at BookMARKS and SparkCon, was a test to see if y’all were paying attention.
(For those of you who missed it, I wrote “. . . help Virginia and I . . .,” when of course it should be “Virginia and me.” And I can’t believe I just pointed it out to those who did miss it.)
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a test, just a garden-variety screw-up caused by haste, carelessness, the fact that my usual editor had a hurricane bearing down on her, and the distraction of my beloved Demon Deacon football team’s home opener the next day.
To those of you who pointed out the mistake, thank you for beginning your messages with variations on “I don’t intend to be picky/mean.” That’s very kind of you, but you are absolutely right to point out mistakes of this kind, even the most minor ones. As several of you said, we are a writers’ group, and the staff of that group should take far more care with the language.
Luckily for me, Wake Forest won one of the most thrilling football games I’ve ever seen, or I’d feel much, much worse about this.
Please accept my apologies. Me try do real good next time.
– Ed Southern