I love DailyKos but I am repeatedly appalled by the low level of proof-reading that diarists apply to their work here. It galls me to no end to find an otherwise well-constructed and cogent essay spoiled by some easily avoidable misspelling or grammar error. A plea to re-read and correct your copy before hitting the "publish" button appears below the fold...
Don't get me wrong -- I am a child of the 60s and I believe that language is what we make of it. I am not speaking about the well-known tendency to split infinitives ("to boldly go" does sound more dramatic than "to go boldly") nor even the habit of putting prepositions at the end of sentences (the sort of pedantry up with which we shall not put!). No, I am talking about thoughtless errors that spoil an otherwise potent diatribe or dissection of an issue. A day or two ago, I caught a diarist talking about a "disparate act," when s/he clearly meant a "desperate act." It was worth a laugh, but it sapped the entire piece of its satiric edge (note to satirists: if you are going to gibe at someone, make sure you follow the rules of spelling and grammar punctiliously, otherwise you satire yourself first!). And the number of diarists who cannot get subjects and verbs to agree, or who forget that the word "an" usually appears before a word that starts with a vowel in English, is too great to count.
(And I know I am opening myself up to well-deserved criticism about my own style, spelling and grammar, but if you can't point out other people's flaws, what's the sense of having a user name?)
We don't get a lot of editing tools in DailyKos-land (please Markos -- add a spell-checker!) but we do at least get the chance to "preview diary." Please, I beg you -- use it! You may be smart and even witty, but you will appear even smarter and wittier if you READ YOUR COPY OVER BEFORE YOU PUBLISH YOUR DIARIES!