Jury Doody

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It’s not that I mind getting the summons for jury duty.  This is something we must all face sooner or later.  No, what bothers me — and I’m going to go on a limb and say it bothers me not even as English teacher, but as a human — is that on this letter, which goes out to literally thousands of people in the community monthly, is a typo so obvious and egregious that I think my high school students could spot it.

Using “who’s” when you meant to use “whose”?  Scrub city.  For that matter…

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It may be hard to read in this picture, but that sentence positively makes my brain boil.  If you can’t read it there, it reads:

I hereby affirm that I am a: a full-time student at a college, university, vocational school, or other postsecondary school who, during the period of time the student is enrolled and taking classes or exams.

Is it a subject/verb agreement error?  A misplaced modifier?  This one, I think, falls into the category of scratch the whole thing and try again.  Is it too much to ask that if I’m going to be summoned to do my civic duty — which I am happy to do! — that the means of the summons at least make sense in the language we will presumably use for the service?

 

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