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From: lincoln@eosp1.UUCP (Dick Lincoln)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: What is perfect English?
Message-ID: <973@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Jun-84 15:26:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: eosp1.973
Posted: Fri Jun 29 15:26:03 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 06:05:26 EDT
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> Is there anything concrete that says EXACTLY what perfect English
> is?  I don't think so!  To prove it I will give the following
> senario:

> I was taking my second quarter of English the same time I was taking
> a class in assembly language programming (IBM 370 assembler).  The
> same day a program was due, a paper was due for the English class.
> Since I had little time to write a paper from scratch, I found a
> paper from the previous quarter that I made a B on and retyped it to
> hand in.  I made a C on the paper the second time.  Both English
> teachers had a PhD (in English).

> Two English professors could not agree on what was correct or not!  I
> was temped to try it a third time to see what would happen, but I
> didn't.

Similarly, I wrote essays in a compulsory foreign literature course for
both myself and a friend during our freshman year in Engineering.  We
were in the same course with one lecturer, but in different class
sections with different instructors.  My friend could barely get
subject and predicate together in a sentence, but was quite good at
math and science.

I repeatedly wrote virtually the identical essay on the same topic for
both classes.  He retyped his version to avoid the appearance of
obvious plagiarism.  What galled me most was that for the same essays
HE received (really I received) A's and B+'s in his class while I
received B's and C+'s in mine.