Yvonne Mason received this letter after writing to President Donald Trump. Then she started to edit. (Photo provided by Yvonne Mason) When Yvonne Mason first opened the letter, she read it all the way through. It did, after all, have the president’s seal at the top and his signature at the bottom. But sometime around the third read, something began to irk the retired teacher, who had spent 17 years of her life refining the English skills of middle and high school students: Look at all these unnecessarily capitalized letters, she thought. "Federal" and "Nation" and "State" and "States" – common nouns capitalized as if they were proper nouns. And too many of the sentences began with the ninth letter of the alphabet: "I signed into law" and "I also directed." The letter, with her name on it, was written on heavy, official-feeling paper. Some would see such a letter from the president as suitable for framing. But for Mason, there was an itch that could not go unscratched. She took out a purple pen and did something she had done countless times with countless papers. She started circling. It began with those pesky capital letters. But by the end, she had scrawled several notes, crossed out a few punctuation marks, and asked whoever wrote the letter a question that may or may not have been rhetorical: "Have y’all tried grammar and style check?" A scrawl at the end of the paper was aimed at one sentence but seemed […]

Click here to view original web page at Trump sent a retired teacher a letter about gun policy. She fixed the grammar and sent it back.

When Yvonne Mason first opened the letter, she read it all the way through. It did, after all, have the president’s seal at the top and his signature at the bottom. But sometime around the third read, something began to irk the retired teacher, who had spent 17 years of her life refining the English skills of middle and high school students: Look at all these unnecessarily capitalized letters, she thought . “Federal” and “Nation” and “State” and “States” — common nouns capitalized as if they were proper nouns. And too many of the sentences began with the ninth letter of the alphabet: “I signed into law” and “I also directed.” The letter, with her name on it, was written on heavy, official-feeling paper. Some would see such a letter from the president as suitable for framing. But for Mason, there was an itch that could not go unscratched. She took out a purple pen and did something she had done countless times with countless papers. She started circling. Yvonne Mason received this letter after writing to President Trump. Then, she started to edit. (Yvonne Mason) It began with those pesky capital letters. But by the end she had scrawled several notes, crossed out a few punctuation marks and asked whoever wrote the letter a question that may or may not have been rhetorical: “Have y’all tried grammar and style check?” A scrawl at the end of the paper was aimed at one sentence but seemed to sum up […]

Click here to view original web page at Trump sent a retired teacher a letter about gun policy. She fixed the grammar and sent it back.