As a former journalist, I pride myself on proper spelling, being grammatically correct and being consistent in my writing style. In my more than 50 years as a journalist, the United Press International Stylebook was THE proper way of writing. It;s my writing Bible, so to speak.
For example, it says to always spell out numbers one through nine (then use digits thereafter), don’t over-capitalize, use punctuation sparingly (take that, you supporters of the Oxford comma!) and don’t use the word “over” when you mean “more than.”
So I was embarrassed last week when my nine-year-old grandson spotted an error in one of my blogs. I used the words You Tube instead of the proper YouTube (no space between the words). Sorry Max, you were right and thanks for the catch.
On another subject, it was interesting to read about the report by the Rodey law firm of Albuquerque concerning recommendations to correct problems which led to a fatal shooting at the University of New Mexico by a New Mexico State University basketball player. The NMSU administration asked the law firm for a complete and independent review of the incident, with recommendations to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’m sure most of you have read about the matter many times, so I won’t repeat the details, but I will list what the recommendations were:
- Establish a more detailed policy about weapons on campus.
- Have a procedure for how coaches should cooperate/communicate with law enforcement officials involving possible crimes involving players.
- Make sure that student athletes adhere to integrity and values of the school.
- Create more detailed policies for team and individual player curfews.
- Revise student athlete handbook.
- Better administrative oversight of student athletes.
Well duh. I may not be the brightest guy around, but I suspect that almost anyone who followed the story could have come up with that list. I’m not sure how much NMSU paid for the review by the Albuquerque law firm, but I’m sure it was in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m just wondering what would have been a better use for that taxpayer money.
When I see things like this, I always go back to the cornerstone of being a good person: “Remember what your mother told you.” Maybe we need a “house mother” in the athletic department.
aero-cordero.com 