Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Controversial: Don't Assume

I decided to give you guys a break on this assignment. And the break regarded a confusing text passage. Here it was:

Sandra Adler is a parent whose daughter was a senior on last year's team along with the four boys. Adler also was an all-state consensus pick as player of the year during her senior year on the girls' field hockey team thirty years ago. Her husband is Stuard Adler, minister of the Chuch of Christ. "I just don't think it is healthy mentally or physically to have the boys and girls playing on the same team."

What's confusing here is that it's not clear who is providing the quote: Sandra or Stuard. The correct response would have been to ask your sources -- in this case, me -- for a clarification. Only a couple of you did that. The rest of you apparently guessed. Some went with Sandra; others with Stuard.

In the past I arbitrarily picked one or the other as the correct speaker and fataled whoever went the other way. I am giving you a gift here in the form of a free pass. You won't get two.

Please, make sure you fully understand what you are writing. Don't make guesses.

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