This party has more than its fair share of grammar nerds. I have to say that a misplaced apostrophe brings me out in hives. For others, the misuse of punctuation is no laughing matter.
Many of us will therefore be pleased to see this critique of the manifestos for grammar and literacy. We do quite well. It is a funny piece and some of the award titles are inspired. My particular favourite is
The “Oh S**t, We Double-Booked The Brewery P**s-Up” Award for Complete And Utter Grammatical Incompetence
This is won by the Labour Party.
We, however, scoop the ultimate accolade:
The “Perhaps Give Up On Government And Become An English Teacher” Award for An Almost Perfect (In SPaG Terms) Manifesto<
The sentences flow well, the messaging is concise and persuasive, the grammar and punctuation are pretty much spot on, and they’re consistent (e.g. with words vs digits). While it doesn’t have quite the “rousing speech”-ness of the Conservative one, it’s pretty hard to fault.
Duncan Brack,(vice Chair of the Federal Policy Committee), your work here is done.
We are also praised for our appropriate use of hyphens:
You know who nailed it every single time? The Lib Dems. For example, this is pretty much the black belt of hyphen usage in compound adjectives
You might want to read the rest to see how Labour and the Conservatives are shamed in various ways.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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6 Comments
Well that’s the grammar nazi vote sewn up, then!
Great for the manifesto, crap for its price. If you wish to improve education for the masses you make it (that horrible word) affordable.
Nigel: you can download the .pdf for free
OK but isn’t “every single time” a tautology?
Also phrases like “promote high quality evidence based leadership” sets my BS detector alarm off!
Caron Lindsay: “This party has more than its fair share of grammar nerds.”
I’m sure most would prefer to be called grammar geeks rather than nerds…
Interestingly (to me alone, perhaps), I received a “template” election address from my Tory candidate. It hardly seems worth disturbing the proof reader.
Candidate and party ID: 18 words.
Legal disclaimer: 30 words.
Content: 133 words.
Frequent use of the word ‘regular’ for frequent irregularities.
The phrase “the truth is” is used a prefix for biased, unfactual and inaccurate statements.