The Motley Fool, indeed

[mrbenchly7]

Today I applied for a job at The Motley Fool. The text below is my answer to one of their application questions. As Freckles would say, "Balls to the wall, baby! Balls to the wall!"...

On March 7, 2007, I applied for a job at The Motley Fool and in the application, they asked me to describe "instances where your 'grammar neurosis' caused you to edit

Comments

[msparker16]

I think you gave them EXACTLY the answer they wanted.

Good show...and good luck.

[bookishlady]

most excellent. hope you get it!!

as an english prof., i should probably have known before reading your post that that particular part of speech is called a subordinate conjunction, huh? hmm.

[mrbenchly7]

If it's any consolation, I knew something was wrong with the sentence but I couldn't explain what was wrong without first looking it up in the Chicago Manual of Style. Also, in retrospect, I feel as though I should have corrected the ending of the sentence as well. I feel as though it is incorrect to end a sentence with "shouldn't have" and that the correct thing to do would have been to change it to "shouldn't have edited" but again, I have no idea what the rule is. Do you?

[bookishlady]

i don't know the rule off-hand, but the editing half of me favors the slightly "off" in lieu of the repetitive. i really don't teach much grammar.

[subveritas]

I think that's brilliant! Well done.

[that_girl2]

what the hell is the motley fool??? why am i not cool enough to know about it? and why do i have a masters in english and still don't know my parts of speech.

[mrbenchly7]

I'd never heard of The Motley Fool before I found their ad. They sound cool though.