Thou Unnecessary Letter

For the past several years, I have taught Editing 101 (formally known as "Principles and Practices of Editing") at City College. This is the first or second course that most students entering the editing program take, and it provides an overview of How Editing Works. The students that I or the grammar instructor don't scare away from the program have typically left my nest, to go on and take specialized courses in various editorial tasks, such as copy editing, substantive editing, or proofreading, and topics, such as editing children's literature. I rarely see them again, though a few become LinkedIn contacts or DW friends.

This semester, I was hired by Polygnostic University to teach proofreading. Since PU pays a lot more than City College, I relinquished my position as the 101 instructor with CC—these are evening courses, and I really didn't want to be teaching for two evenings a week. I found another instructor for City College, and thought all was well there.

Of course, Polygnostic got in touch with me in early January to tell me they'd cancelled my course, because not enough students had enrolled (I'm still teaching the online version of the same course, so that's something). At the same time, the coordinator of my program at CIty e-mailed me urgently looking for an instructor for their proofreading course. So, figuring that some paid in-class time was better than no paid in-class time, I offered to take on the course for one semester. 

The first class last night was really neat! It's all students I've taught before, from about the past 3 years. Most seemed happy to see me. But the best moment came as one student walked in.

"Oh great," she said, "Now I know this is going to be hard!"

Poor little duckling. 

(Heh, heh, heh.)

I am creating an online copyediting course. The convention of this course is that each week contains a Discussion topic about which students can post on the class Discussion board.

The topic for Week 3 is Punctuation. So, I get to come up with a punctuation-related discussion topic, for copyediting students.

The hallmarks of a good discussion question are as follows:

• It must be open-ended, to allow for a variety of opinions. Questions that allow for a simple "yes," or "no," do not really provoke great discussion.

• It must have sufficient breadth to allow for a variety of opinions. If there is only one right answer, there's not a lot of room for discussion, and the students who post later on in the week can really only say "me too!"

• It must actually be germane to the topic at hand.

So, Internets, what do you think I should set as the week's discussion topic for punctuation?

The semicolon: marker of an outmoded elite or undervalued shorthand?

Who will save the apostrophe? How?

Who really cares about em-dashes?

All suggestions gladly welcomed. Suggestions that actually provoke discussion will be entertained.

ETA: Stuff like Emily Dickinson's Punctuation: The Controversy Revisited is alas beyond the scope of my course. I am toying with a "how do you balance the needs of your author's artistry with the conventions of punctuation"-type question, but I don't want to have to write an entire idiosyncratically punctuated ms.

I'm at the cool part of things again--the part where I come up with ideas about what's going to go into a resource. In this particular project--a literacy resource for primary students--we're using a lot of poetry. I'm rediscovering Dennis Lee, of course. And Raffi.

I'm also encountering a lot of poets whose work I've never read before.

There's a lot of bad kids' poetry out there, I can tell you. But, it is also amazing and humbling what some people can convey, using very simple words. Here are two that hit me today:

From Thanks a Million: Poems by Nikki Grimes, Illustrations by Cozbi A. Cabrera

Shelter
I wish these walls were ours,
I wish this bed were mine,
that dinnertime meant just us three,
my brother, mom, and me.

I wish I had a room
that I was forced to clean.
I'd gripe for my best friend, then say,
"Come to my house and play."

Things could be worse, I know.
At least, I'm not alone.
My mom and brother hold me tight
when I cry late at night.

Dear Author

When my father died last year,
Somebody threw a switch and turned me off.
I couldn’t breathe. Or cry.
My family wondered why.

Months passed, and they figured
I must be okay. But they were wrong.
I leaked sadness everywhere I went.
No one seemed to notice or understand.
Until Lotus, the girl in your last book.
She was also drowning deep inside.
Some nights, I’d crawl between the pages
of that novel and hide for hours.

The two of you made all the difference.
I just thought you’d want to know.

Sincerely,
Grateful

Scientific knowledge is based on empirical evidence, and is appropriate for understanding the natural world, but it provides only a limited understanding of the supernatural, aesthetic, or other ways of knowing, such as art, philosophy, or religion.1

Here follows a very short rant. Maybe a rantlet.

This bothers me. It's a clear nod to the godbodies—we don't have apologia or disclaimers in the math standards, the history standards, or the geography standards. We don't have to say that an understanding of literary conventions in English will help you to understand and interpret texts written in English and literary traditions that share a similar cultural background, but may not be easily applied to an understanding of the narrative traditions of a non-literary culture (though perhaps we should!).

What do you all think of this?

1 From the Florida Standards for Science Education, Grade 7. It is, of course, not the only standard, nor even the most important.

Dear Internets,

Halp!

I need to come up with a title for a short article for a science textbook for grades 6, 7, and 8. The article is about the strange and fascinating reproductive practices of seahorses (short version: females deposit eggs in males' brood pouches. Males fertilize and carry the brood of seahorse babies, eventually going into something that resembles labour, and the brood leaves the pouch).

Here are the requirements:

• No personification: we're not allowed to assign human characteristics to non-human entities (therefore no gender-role jokes).
• No overt raciness: this is for middle-graders in the U.S.
• Should be kind of fun and cool—these features are supposed to be engaging.
• Title should not be more than five words (or it won't fit)

Ideally, for design purposes, the title will include the word "Seahorse," but this is not a requirement.

Titles that have been panned:

Seahorse Reproduction—too boring
Making Babies, Seahorse Style—too suggestive
Seahorses: Sexual Rebels of the Sea—personification; too long

So, oh internets, I turn to you for assistance, because everyone here is scratching their heads and looking puzzled. Well, to be truthful, everyone here has gone home. They've already scratched their heads and looked puzzled.

So, give me a title! Do it for the fame! Do it for the glory! Do it for the LOLs!