PUPILS AND PIXIES

For their last graded exercise, my students had to edit a made-up story about Paula Abdul coming to town to host a cheerleading workshop. One sentence described her as the perky, pixyish 80's popstar who now doles out motherly advice on "American Idle."

You can see a few mistakes there.

Beginning editing students tend to be timid, so instead of confidently correcting errors, they usually just write questions in bold suggesting that something might be wrong.

Like:

Do we need that many adjectives? Consider taking out perky.

Shouldn't the apostrophe in 80's go before the 8?

Isn't pop star two words?

Does the reporter mean deals, not doles? I've never heard of doles.

Is motherly the right word?

According to the official Web site, it's Idol, not Idle. (It amuses me when they get all official on my ass — when they appeal to the highest authority where common sense would suffice. I tell them you don't need a gun to kill a fly, but they don't know how to reconcile that with the paranoia I've worked so hard to instill in them).

One student changed the sentence to Paula Abdul, the pixy who doles out advice on "American Idol." Apparently he didn't think she was perky, or possibly he thought perky was an essential component of pixy and therefore redundant. I'm not sure. And I don't know why he considered her more of an actual pixy rather than just pixy-ISH. All he wrote by way of explanation was this: I took out that she was an '80s pop star because I thought it might be a sensitive subject for her.

Adieu, KG. Thank you for being fabulous.