Today's Composition Assignment
Below is a passage from an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Your assignment: identify the glaring writing error committed by the author, Peggy Noonan.
This is what the American victory in Iraq is going to mean:
It is going to mean, first, that something good happened. This sounds small but is huge. The West has been depressed since Sept. 11, 2001. It has been torn, riven. It has been a difficult time. The coming victory is going to be the biggest good thing that has happened in the world, the West and the United States since the twin towers fell.
(via Atrios)
Comments
Owch, it took a bit for non-editor me to find it. Reading the sentence in isolation found it. It's amazing how much error correction our brains can perform when we have context.
Posted by: Bill Humphries | March 24, 2003 11:23 AM
Actually, there's more than one error, but it's that big one that I can't believe slipped by the WSJ editor. Maybe the editor was just stricken dumb by the entire thing and couldn't even read it--that would explain a lot.
Posted by: Glen | March 25, 2003 05:12 AM
Sheesh ... If that was a good thing, I'd hate to see what a bad thing is ...
More than a few people's (editor's) brains surely went numb on that one.
Posted by: alex g | March 25, 2003 09:33 AM