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Out-pedanticized?

Not that I'm terribly proud of the programming glitch that makes me unable to walk past a grocer's sign that says "Apple's $.50c apiece" without twitching uncontrollably, but my eye for excessive detail and inclination toward infinity approaching perfection has come in handy from time to time.

It's a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing when I'm doing anything for a grade, as I know how to punctuate and spell and capitalize properly, and this sort of thing usually puts professors in an agreeable frame of mind at the outset. Nice handwriting is another thing I've noticed they tend to grade forgivingly. These things are the power of appearance subconscious motivators of the writing world--or the written word, if you will--much like attractive, well-groomed and well-dressed people automatically have a better chance at being considered for a job than your average slob.

The drawbacks of the pedantic drive and perfectionism include difficulty focusing on the ideas being presented when the spelling and punctuation are hit and miss, as well as the problem of paper-writing requiring two or three times as long as the average bear.

I'm thinking about this because I'm writing decorations.

Oh. To catch y'all up: two weeks ago, all the rest of the groups in the wing figured out that you simply cannot write squadron level decorations, period. Even after I explained precisely why to our group exec, though, our group--mainly our group chief, methinks--maintained this ridiculous position until three days ago, at which point we were told, "Submit decoration citations as you normally would. They're due yesterday."

Well, sorta. We were given three days to submit our decorations. Thankfully, I'd already anticipated their last-minute return to sanity and was all but finished, anyway.

So this morning, Jeff and I are buffing up last minute things on them. He pointed out to me* the fact that the mandatory rote last sentence of all decoration citations is grammatically incorrect.

* Thank you, Jeff. Like I needed another thing to be quirky about.

It reads: "The distinctive accomplishments of (RANK NAME) reflect credit upon (herself/himself) and the United States Air Force." Can you spot it? I couldn't. This is where I realized I'm in the presence of true anal-retentiveness.

The subject of the sentence is "the distinctive accomplishments"--not (in my case) "Lieutenant Black." "Himself/herself" is a reflexive pronoun. A reflexive pronoun can only refer to the subject of the sentence (which is not me, but my accomplishments). The grammatically correct way to state this idea, then, would be "The distinctive accomplishments of Lieutenant Black reflect credit upon her and the United States Air Force."

When writing decorations, one is limited to certain perimeters (if you're paying attention, you'll notice this theme in all military writing). The margins must be just so, the font must by a certain type at a certain size, and all the necessary information must be compiled so as to present the most comprehensive picture of what the recipient did and what a big deal it was. Space becomes very limited. For this reason, we often try to wedge far too much information in each sentence.

Jeff "Pedants R Us" Baker noticed this in my write-up: "During this period, while exposed to extreme danger from numerous hostile rocket and mortar attacks, Lieutenant Black's outstanding leadership and astute program management skills led to exceptional communication and information system planning in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM." The sentence was so long and bunglesome that I lost track of what I was saying. I didn't realize I was claiming my leadership and PM skills were exposed to mortar attacks.

In the interest of space, though, I thought we might combine the descriptive flowery stuff. To wit: "During this period, Lieutenant Black's hostile leadership and dangerous program management skills led to extremely dangerous communication and information system planning in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM."

Back to work now. Ciao for now.

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