I don't usually do this, because I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to grammar, but I thought I should say this:
For an average person like myself, being grammar deficient may not be a big deal, nor is being with it a measure of intelligence. But for someone who makes a living aggregating, writing, editing, and presenting news, decent use of basic grammar is a proficiency one would expect, because in order to make the sense of what is written easier to determine, tenses should be tight, subjects and verbs agree, and punctuation marks properly placed.
Once upon a time, anything goes, provided it is information that most of us wanted to hear so badly; tyranny inveighing news mostly. But now that all that is almost gone and a "New Gambia" is being built, quality is non-negotiable. No more satisfaction with mediocrity!
If you think punctuations do not matter, check this story that I saw somewhere: "An English professor wrote on the board: 'A woman without her man is nothing.' The class was then asked to punctuate the sentence.
The men wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."
The women wrote:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."
The same sentence, same amount of words, but see how the mere positioning of a colon and a comma changed everything, and sincerely tell me that misplaced punctuation marks cannot misinform.
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