When a retired English teacher received a letter from president Trump, she corrected the letter and sent it back to the White House. The resident of Atlanta, Yvonne Mason further said that the letter had so many mistakes that it could hardly have passing marks.
After examining so many mistakes, the retired teacher corrected the letter and sent it to the White House. Retired last year, Mason taught English to the students of the middle and high school for 17 years. The teacher from South Carilona corrected grammatical mistakes in the letter signed by president Trump. According to the teacher, there were 17 mistakes of improper capitalization in the letter.
While giving an interview to the Greenville News of South Carolina, Mason said that if the letter had been written by a middle school student then she would have given ‘C’ or ‘C-‘ grade. And if the letter had been written by a high school student, then the grade would have been ‘D’, Mason continued. However, the retiree did not attach the graded details with the letter she sent to the White House.
According to Mason, the letter was written by one of the staff members. Mason received this letter in response to the one she wrote to the president for meeting the parents of the children affected in a 14-Feb school shooting attack in Florida. She further told the newspaper that when a letter is received from the highest authority, one expects it to be mechanically correct.
The letter was stylistically awful, and then she compared Trump’s writing to the letters she received from the office of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Sen. The White House officials did not respond to the request, Mason further added. However, earlier the president held a listening session with the parents of affected children in which he discussed the parents that how these shooting attacks can be avoided.
In her 17-year long teaching career, Mason had seen many letters like this one from her students but this was the first time that she received such a letter from the highest authority. After reading the letter, the high school teacher did what she had done thousands of time – she corrected it and sent it back to the White House.
The photo of the corrected letter went viral on the social media after that. Mason dinged the president’s letter for capitalizing the words like “state”, “federal”, “president” and “nation”. Mason pointed out 11 capitalization mistakes in Trump’s letter and highlighted those with pink ink as red ink is discouraged in some educational institutes.
In the corrected letter, Mason pointed out that “Federal” is capitalized only when it is used as a proper noun. It was further reported that The Greenville News reporters reached to the White House Officials to have a response on the corrected letter but no one was available for comment. But many readers told that words like “nation”, “state”, “federal” needs to be capitalized while writing an official document.
Mason has a long history of writing e-mails, letters, and faxes to the local and federal officials. The English teacher, in a recent project, sent a postcard to the president every day of the year. The former actress of Greenville Cafe said that in many ways a citizen can be a part of democracy. She says she does it by writing and that she loves writing funny things.
Mason further told that in school she taught students that writing speaks a lot about one’s personality and desire to get anything right is demonstrated by the writing. It was said that Trump’s letter was not a proper response to what Mason asked earlier. Instead, Trump talked about the general measures that can be taken to avoid school shooting incidents. The president didn’t address the issue, said Mason. Mason’s comments also showed that there was a redundant use of the pronoun “I” in the President’s letter.
Mason also asked Trump to instruct the federal officials to use precise writing on the government website plainlanguage.gov. It is necessary to use precise and clear writing so that everyone is on the same page and no one is going to be misunderstood, said Mason.