And by the way, you misspelled “curiosity” and “devices,” while this: “blockaded rather than impeded” is gibberish indicating an insufficient understanding of what these words mean. I’m not one to flame folks for spelling and similar errors, but I would think that someone who felt compelled to blather at length about a non-native English speaker’s shortcomings in the writing department would take care to have his own house in order.

I left Erwin’s piece midpoint, with the impression that it was a rather simplistic and not terribly revolutionary account of cultural appropriation. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t finish it, but that was not only because of the grammar and diction: hackneyed phrasing and clumsy literary devises blockaded rather than impeded my understanding of and interest in whatever it was he was trying to say. When your reader leaves your piece with not even the curiousity to go to another source about your subject matter, you have not added to the critical dialogue, and you have not succeeded as an author.

And the anonymity of the internet will be the downfall of accountability. Hmm, I wonder which is more important – grammar and diction or personal integrity?

It was not as awful as I was expecting, at least not at the beginning. The only out-and-out error I spotted was “second rang” instead of second rank. I think he also meant “clothes” rather than “cloths.”

What made it so difficult to read is that the whole article is in italic type for no apparent reason, there are no spaces after the periods and the paragraphs are way too long.

But when I got to this “sentence”–After having navigated with many a compromise act between the painful thorns of the slavery issue and its extension in the north-south political struggle, the Emancipation Declaration of 1863 and the settlement of the Civil War in 1865 laid the cards open on the table, at least for the moment.”–I bailed out.