COMMENTARY
As I prepare what will be a brief article on Monday night's upcoming City of Alexander council meeting, I would like to comment about a word that gets misused in both city minutes and comments on this blog. The word is "statue."
For those of you who may be unaware a statue, according to dictionary.com, is "a three-dimensional work of art ... carved in stone or wood, molded in a plastic, cast in bronze, or the like." For instance, The Statue of Liberty is a statue; hence its name.
Unless the city council is discussing erecting a statue to one of its greatest mayors, or this blog is discussing the proposal, why do the writers of city minutes and some of our bloggers insist on using the word "statue" when they mean "statute?"
Returning to dictionary.com, a statute is, "an enactment made by a legislature and expressed in a formal document." In other words, a law.
A statue is something you look at. A statute is something you look to for guidance to ensure your actions are legal.
I'm not going to blame the entire Arkansas education system for this confusion of the two words. After all, not everyone living in Arkansas was born and educated here. I also can't blame it on an occasional typing error since it's so consistent in its usage.
What I will say is this. When it comes to the city minutes they must be accurate, complete and grammatically correct. Accurate and complete if the minutes are ever needed to be used in court. And, grammatically correct so Alexander doesn't represent itself as the backwards little city full of country bumpkins people see us as.
Alex, in the history of Alexander city Council Minutes, when were they ever grammatically correct?!?!?! If you want to see the English language in it's most fractured form, just get a few of the Minutes from it's history in the past 10 to 12 years! They will make you will wonder!
ReplyDeleteI have.
DeleteWe can't seem to get people to serve the city who display ability to do the job. Minutes are as described above, one clone alderman is just that in my opinion, can't seem to grasp the situation, just sees fellow aldermen as the "enemy" who are anything but!
ReplyDeleteEnough cannot be said for the progress of this panel of Aldermen. They are a team of 6 (maybe sometimes 7) good people who are focused on moving ahead.
BIG JOB - BIG PEOPLE
Louella how did the meeting go? Haven't heard anything about it.
DeleteI thought it went well, they got a lot of things done; much more to go; opinions still differ like flint (some sparks) but over all this council is committed to do what is right for the community. And that 'right' is coming across as the majority of citizens opinion.
DeleteRefreshing!
There still seems to me an evil attempt to 'kill-off' our fire department. We'll look back in month ahead and see what "flew" and what didn't - it is still up in the air. Hopefully it won't work, and the Fire Department will recover.
apologize for grammer, didn't 'proof' it.
Delete