WEeding Awards, vol. 1

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Announcement

I am instituting the WEeding Awards to highlight those texts which continue the unfortunate trend of misusing the first-person plural. It is my hope that these awards will inspire people to weed out such mistakes in their own thinking. (And I hope that handing out WEedings will keep me on my toes, lest I have to “honor” one of my own pieces in the process!)

Winner 1

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The first winner is a text by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek, entitled “How the South Won (This) Civil War.”

Reasons for Winning:

This article was nominated for a WEedy because of the following lines:

A:

“We must endure ‘lapel-pin politics’ that elevates the shallowest sort of faux jingoism over who’s got a better plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. We have re-imported creationism into our political dialogue (in the form of ‘intelligent design’).” -Michael Hirsh

B:

“We routinely demonize organizations like the United Nations that we desperately need and which are critical to missions like nation-building in Afghanistan.” -Michael Hirsh

Comments:

This text was awarded a WEedy because of the blatant shift from a possibly-legitimate use of “we” in A’s first sentence (i.e., it could be that “we” all are “enduring” the “politics” described) to the obvious misuse of “we” in A’s second sentence.

In loathing the “re-impor[ation of] creationism into our political dialogue,” Mr. Hirsh shows himself to not be party to said re-importation. But since Mr. Hirsh is not one of the re-importers, he cannot legitimately speak of them in the first person.

The same reasoning applies to B’s use of “we.” Through this line, Mr. Hirsh makes it evident that he deeply appreciates “organizations like the United Nations.” Therefore, Mr. Hirsh would not “demonize” any such organization, and cannot use the first person of those who do.

WEediness Quotient:

I count 2 sentences that contain WEeds (i.e., misuses of the first-person plural). I count 9 other sentences in which the first-person plural is used legitimately. Thus, the WEediness Quotient of “How the South Won (This) Civil War” is 2/9, or 0.222… .

Since this article is the first winner of a WEeding Award, it sets the record for number of WEedy sentences, and overall WEediness Quotient. Congratulations to “How the South Won (This) Civil War“!

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Call for Nominations

Have you encountered any texts online (posts, articles, comments, speeches, websites, etc.) which need WEeding? I welcome nominations for future WEeding Awards, so keep your eye out while you’re surfing! Just use the Contact page, and send me the URL.

Thanks!

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Tags: Michael Hirsh, Newsweek