A Lesson for the Kids Out There

If you're writing a paper, never--never ever--use the phrase "since the dawn of time" or some similar nonsense. It's the fastest way to tell your prof, "I absolutely refuse to give this assignment an ounce of original thought, and furthermore I would like to take the first sentence of this essay to insult not only your intelligence, but my own as well."

After reading this phrase for the third (!) time in a single batch of essays, I googled it and quickly stumbled upon an oasis of sarcastic greatness: Kem's Utterly Merciless Guide to Essay Writing. She tells it exactly like it is, which is to say, she says exactly what I'd love to tell students myself if I was willing to risk bad course evaluations.

For example, in reference to the phrase mentioned above, she kindly informs us: "If you start at the [expletive] dawn of time, how the hell are you going to narrow down your topic in time to write anything on it? If you were writing on the joys of peanut-butter sandwiches, would you begin with a history of food? No? Then keep your hands off the dawn of time. It is not relevant to your essay unless you are Stephen Hawking, and somehow, I don't think you are."

Balm for the soul.

Similarly, in reference to the use of commas: "Commas are not the chocolate sprinkles of written language."

Finally, she lays into one of my pet peeves: the use of "they" and "them" as singular gender-neutral pronouns. This usage leads to absurdities like "When making a decision, someone should make up their own mind." As I point out to my class, there are a few philosophers who believe that mind is singular and we all simply partake in it rather than having our own individual minds, but no student of mine even understands that claim, let alone believes it. This mistake also leads to atrocious pseudowords like "themself." Ugh.

Kem's take on this irritant: "'They is not a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.' If I could make this sentence flash on and off in different colours, then leap from the screen and inscribe itself upon your eyeballs in letters of fiery death, I would be hunting up the necessary code right now."

I couldn't have put it better myself.