A writer who doesn’t proofread

June 3, 2016 • 2:30 pm

I’m not quite sure who this fellow is, but he’s apparently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside. It’s thus a bit disturbing that a writer doesn’t proofread his own personal self-promotion page. I count at least five errors on this section of his introduction page:

Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 5.42.09 PM

78 thoughts on “A writer who doesn’t proofread”

  1. No, no, I think he is wearing a message suit right there. He usually wears a message suit when he speaks on events. Whether he does and not it depends on how much you pay him, I’m sure.

          4. Allegedly the practice has finally died out, with the coos no longer trimming the grass here.
            To be honest, hearing that wild elk (EN_CA, EN_US : caribou) are still routinely swum out to Islands in the Finnmark, I am sure the practice continues.

          5. Incidentally, there is a great fossil site about 10km south of that map link. It’s a “hammer-free zone”, protected site, but the foreshore is worth turning over for fossils in the cobbles. Interesting little power station too.

    2. I believe that he meant “I’m not quite sure how this fellow is (a professor in the Department of Creative Writing…)”

    4. I at leased checked to sea that sum won sited that egregious error bee four eye bothered two mention it. Really, its just gotten too the point wear its absurd the number of misteaks that Peeples make righting on the Web. Eye four won, always proofr3ad my posts pry or too sub mission.

  7. “Reza Aslan can craft…” should read “Reza Aslan can fabricate…” Never forget that Reza Aslan lied about the prevalence of female genital mutilation in islamic countries, saying it’s a central African problem. He’s more concerned with propping up a positive image of islam than the health and well-being of muslim women.

    1. It’s like David Mitchell’s comment about signwriters. They (like website designers) offer – he suggests – a standard service that reproduces the content exactly as it was provided by the client and a premium service that includes copy editing.

      /@

  10. Looks like he also doesn’t wash his hair before having his photo taken! I think the Brits refer to someone like this as a punter (or worse).

        1. Well, I have been otherwise occupied a bit of late…apologies that I seem to have missed that Aslan has taken on a status not unlike that Where’s-his-man fellow who shall not be named….

          b&

          >

  12. As soon as I saw who it was my brain attempted escape to sanctuary and switched my eyes off before they started to bleed. Unless there’s a seriously worthwhile prize for finding these errors, the pain of sifting through that steaming pile prevents me from trying.

    1. It’s like the old joke that everyone should use on even worse occasions, like seeing your boss naked.
      “I’ve gone blind!”
      Then,
      “One second too late”.

  13. Stoopid peepul maek misteaks.

    Intelligent people make strike>typograf tipo typergtypografik aw, hell – booboos!

    2. And it’s even worse when you can’t edit your comments after posting them.

  14. Seriously embarrassing. Make sure you save the screen shot for when he denies it ever happened!

    1. That will tempt “Photo shop, ‘cuz in never happened” comments. “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

    2. riddled with grammatical, structural and spelling clunkers. I typed the sentence with suite instead of suit and its not an autocorrect error as autocorrect didn’t change it.
      I think the tab should read “invite reza azlan to speak on your planet”

      1. Ha ha! So maybe it wasn’t him who put it up after all, but someone who’s hoping he’ll get an offer from the Andromeda galaxy and be gone for a while!

  17. OMG (I suppose Reza would say OMA), he’s getting a James Joyce award from an Irish University which has been previously given to Salmon Rushdie.

    “a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in Arabia now putting on their hijabs for the day well soon have the imams bowing to mecca theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd mullah or two”
    (Apologies to Joyce and his fans)

    1. Well, he did get some kind of Truman Capote award or fellowship. That’s apropos for a ‘creative writer’ since Capote definitely was not a writer whose non-fiction could be trusted to hew to mere facts.

      1. Aslan was Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. It’s for graduate students promoting creative writing.

        There is a Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, but RA did not win that.

  18. He is in the Creative Writing Dept. after all. What do you expect? Poor proofreading is surely just another PC innovation — wouldn’t want to harm the self-esteem of people who have their own grammar and spelling styles, so let the professors set the example. Given that he’s undeniably an extremely ‘creative’ writer and thinker, at least when it comes to religious matters and the Middle East, I’d say that he ‘s well placed in the creative writing department, which sometimes becomes a dumping ground or consolation prize for those who don’t make the cut in more rigorous disciplines, though I thought ethnic and multicultural studies held pride of place in that regard (and I say that as a member of an ethnic minority and sorry to see such things happen). After all, he’s not in the history dept. or international relations, or even religious studies or Middle Eastern studies, and I don’t find that he’s published any novels or short stories or poetry, usual subjects for creative writing departments. Oh, I forgot about what’s called “creative nonfiction” — that must be his metier! It’s all about “higher truth,” whatever that bullcorn is supposed to mean. And please my excuse typos and inconsistent grammar — I ain’t got no proofreader either and my MLA handbook isn’t at hand, and I don’t want to damage my self-esteem by confronting my abysmal English skills. Perhaps I’m coming down with linguistic dementia.

    1. “please my excuse typos and inconsistent grammar”

      Of course. This is WordPress. It incorporates its own built-in text-distortion field that scrambles evreything yuo write. And it wo’nt let yuo fix it afterwords iether!

      cr

  19. Reza Aslan’s degrees according to Wikipedia:

    “B.A in religion, Santa Clara University
    M.T.S in theology, Harvard
    M.F.A in fiction, University of Iowa
    Ph.D in sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara”

    First he studied religion. Then he learned how to write fiction about it, or using it.

    Since he was educated in the U.S., chances are he’s young enough that he wasn’t taught how to read and write properly and, no doubt, was part of that generation that no one corrected so as not to diminish their self esteem.

    It disturbs me to learn that he obtained much of his “education” in California, taught high school in my old home town, and is a professor in a California university.
    California used to have a first rate system
    of education. I think that went the way of the Dodo after Prop 5!

  20. I gather that “message suite” is a PR term.

    (Perhaps in this case a mess of suet.)

  21. I recently had a big laugh when I was looking at an article in our university paper about various faculty who had won an award for teaching. One of the profs taught creative writing, and it included a paragraph written by one of his students.
    Well, it was just about the most pretentious, self conscious piece of writing I had seen. Every other word was ‘creative’. The student must have broken a Thesaurus writing it.

  22. #1: Showing an image when self promoting.
    #2: Showing an image with one light source aimed at the viewer.
    #3-5: Invite-Reza-Aslan.

    1. But, you are not invited unless you are also a conference organizer. Sorry about that.

  25. I suppose he could say – Did you see my intentional mistakes? I was just making sure you were paying attention.

  28. I count 6, if you include the inconsistency of the Oxford comma in the first “sentence” and no Oxford comma in the second.

  29. People relax. It’s “new spelling”. New atheists have their new atheism and that guy has his new spelling, except new atheism isn’t really new. So give the guy some credit for actually having a new thing.

  30. Found another one. “INVITE REZA ASLAN TO SPEAK ON YOUR EVENT” should be “INVITE REZA ASLAN’S SUIT TO SPEAK AT YOUR EVENT”.

  31. It looks like it was awkwardly copy and pasted from this webpage:

    http://lesleyscorgie.com/

    Lesley Scorgie:
    Whether you’re a large or small employer, entrepreneur, educational institution, professional association, private group, or conference organizer, Lesley-Anne can craft an informative, empowering and valuable message to suit your needs.

    Reza Aslan:
    Whether you are an educational institution, professional association, and conference organizer. Reza Aslan can craft an informative, empowering and valuable message suit with his expertise.

      1. Not 100% plagiarism, he made some changes. The original was completely grammatical.

        cr

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