Can the editorial staff please do me a favor and stop using parentheses to interject their astute observations of obvious grammatical errors within readers’ opinion letters? I can’t tell where the readers’ semi-coherent ramblings (which often include parenthetical explanatory notes) end and the editors’ assertion of their own snickery grammatical superiority begins. It’s like, before taking the splinter from your brother’s eye, remove the beam from your own, man. If you’re not hip to metaphors let me put it more concretely: if you must sneak in every other sentence to point out ornamental errors that have nothing to do with the content or meaning of a letter, and you’d prefer to mock the same error five times instead of correcting it, please pay attention to the rules we’ve all agreed upon and USE BRACKETS GOD DAMN IT!

Stupac

This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2009.

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Stop Being So Snide

by Eric Flowers, The Source - Bend, Oregon
March 25, 2009

<h1>Stop Being So Snide</h1> <p class="byline">by Eric Flowers, The Source - Bend, Oregon <br />March 25, 2009</p> <p>Can the editorial staff please do me a favor and stop using parentheses to interject their astute observations of obvious grammatical errors within readers&#039; opinion letters? I can&#039;t tell where the readers&#039; semi-coherent ramblings (which often include parenthetical explanatory notes) end and the editors&#039; assertion of their own snickery grammatical superiority begins. It&#039;s like, before taking the splinter from your brother&#039;s eye, remove the beam from your own, man. If you&#039;re not hip to metaphors let me put it more concretely: if you must sneak in every other sentence to point out ornamental errors that have nothing to do with the content or meaning of a letter, and you&#039;d prefer to mock the same error five times instead of correcting it, please pay attention to the rules we&#039;ve all agreed upon and USE BRACKETS GOD DAMN IT!</p> <p>Stupac</p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/opinion/stop-being-so-snide-2133125/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com&quot;&gt;The Source - Bend, Oregon&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.bendsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/cropped-Untitled-design-4.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://www.bendsource.com/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=17016&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://www.bendsource.com/opinion/stop-being-so-snide-2133125/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/bendsource.com/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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