Natalie Angier: A Good Writer
A Mutinous Group of Cells on a Greedy, Destructive Path
Ms. Natalie Angier, your piece today on metasteses was well done. Your metaphors made us see what happens when cancer cells metasticize. And, thank God or some 9th-grade English teacher, you can punctuate.
Lee Drury De Cesare
http://grammargrinch.com
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:59:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Lee De Cesare" Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: public information
To: steve.hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us
3rd inquiry: Where are the Elia evaluation data? It shouldn't take this long to produce it.
How and who chooses the English textbooks for students?
Thank you,
div>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:59:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Lee De Cesare"
Subject: public information
To: steve.hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us
3rd inquiry: Where are the Elia evaluation data? It shouldn't take this long to produce it.
How and who chooses the English textbooks for students?
Thank you,
posted by twinkobie at
7:55 AM
2 Comments:
I'm curious. Did Ms Angier spell "metastases" and "metastasize" correctly? Whom should she thank if she can?
The web version featured some idiosyncrasies that you usually condemn.
“However much their politics and personal styles may otherwise divide them, Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow have now been linked in the public eye by a brutal disease” - Flabby passive voice.
“They are barbarians, the colonist cells, co-opting all nutrients in their adopted organ and starving their normal neighbors of air, sugar and salts, and blocking traffic and clogging conduits” - Comma needed after “sugar”.
“We are each of us an obligately multicellular community, in which many trillions of microscopic cells have joined forces and fates, have specialized in the tasks to which they were assigned during our embryonic development.” - You pay that one?
“the chronic replacement of skin, hair and intestinal lining” – Comma needed after “hair”.
“They have identified genetic mutations and chromosomal aberrations that prompt cells to think they are being stimulated by growth hormones when they are not” - Flabby passive voice.
“They have learned that full-blown metastasis is an extremely challenging trade, and that the great majority of cancer cells are not up to the task.” - Ditch that comma.
“In his newly published book, “The Biology of Cancer” (Garland Science), Dr. Robert A. Weinberg” - Italicise that book title.
On the bright side: “90 percent of deaths from cancer are the result of metastases” - Hooray!
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