KS15 wrote:
A string of terrorist attackshave hit the sparsely populated province since 2013
This was there in one of the reputed news publications today. My question is -should it not be 'A string of attacks' HAS?
Another sentence from WSJ.Experts-please help
Retail stocks have been rallying, partly because investors were a little too dour heading into this month, but also because it does seem that storeslike Wal-Mart, with its combination of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar offerings, are figuring out how to punch back against the online juggernaut
Dear
KS15,
I see a few other experts have responded. I'll add my two cents here.
For any newspaper, there is a trade-off. One the one hand, there's a kind of traditional emphasis on high quality writing, which of course would include excellent grammar. On the other hand, there's the need to make money and embrace a broad readership. Unfortunately, excellent grammar is actually a put-off to the vast majority of Americans, most of whom are woefully undereducated. Thus, the more a newspaper wants to make money and expand its readership, the more its grammatical standards plummet.
For years, the
Wall Street Journal was a highly esteemed newspaper, holding a high standard of writing quality as well as a high standard of journalistic impartiality. Much of this changed in 2007, when the WSJ was subsumed into Rupert Murdoch's empire, which includes the
FOX News channel. Now, the newspaper, like FOX News, is unabashedly highly conservative and complete dismissively of any liberal positions. A fascination with the high points of grammar is generally associated with academic, which the far right often paints as the liberal elite, so as part of this 2007 shift, the grammatical standards of the paper have plummeted. Of course, not all the grammar is bad, but the paper is no longer an exemplar to which non-natives should aspire. All this is my understanding of the politics and economics of the situation.
In short, don't depend on the WSJ for GMAT SC standards of grammar. The
NY Times, the
Economist Magazine, and the
Financial Times are still well respected, although even these face the tradeoff mentioned above.
Does all this make sense?
Mike