To the person who vandalised Dr. Siddiq Umbadda’s excellent paper on Education and Mismanagement of Sudanese Economy and Society (1954-1989), I have words for you!
You have terrible grammar.
I am reading this great (and quite poetically written) Development Studies and Research Centre paper (no. 83) from October 1990 and I’m starting to yell at the page. It’s not the information. It’s not the arguments, which are clever and making me re-consider how much wasta there was in the early days of Sudanese economic development (More generally, I am starting to re-think some of my arguments in light of all these old papers I have been reading this week). No, it is not Dr. Umbadda’s scholarship at all!
No, it’s all these annoying comments and ‘corrections’ that some young whippersnapper has felt the need to leave in his wake. What is most irritating is that most of his grammatical corrections are wrong! Now, I am NO grammar guru and I frequently roll over syntax rules with aplomb, but if you are going to go through a distinguished professor’s work and ‘correct’ his mistakes, have a little care… and if you are going to do so, don’t write ‘stupid’ in the margins when he is making a good point.
I don’t know you are, but HARAM on you!
As these papers are only available in paper form and only available after careful adventures in the University of Khartoum libraries, people should NOT feel the need to tamper with the texts!
OK, I obviously need to get out of the office and go home. Sunday grumpiness coming out.
One day, I will find you Development Studies and Research Centre vandal! One day!
No comments:
Post a Comment