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Sitting beside two forceful presidential candidates, grandfatherly Bob Schieffer wasn’t able to get in many words.
But he did make a linguistic error when he described the academic performance of American students, whose math and science scores lag. “The implications of this are clearly obvious,” Schieffer said.
The implications may be clear and they may be obvious. [...]

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Tonight was John McCain’s chance to champion Joe the Plumber, and he seized the opportunity with vigor. Whenever conversation veered, he brought it back on track. “We’re talking about Joe the Plumber,” he reminded Barack Obama at one point.
As thrilled as Joe may be, linguists were less satisfied with McCain’s performance.
In a humorous twist on [...]

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When we wasn’t trying to keep up with John McCain’s references to Joe the Plumber, Barack Obama made a number of linguistic errors tonight.
“If you make less than a quarter million dollars a year,” he said, your taxes will not be increased. Later he noted that 98 percent of small businesses “make less than $250,000.”
When [...]

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Barack Obama, otherwise known as “that one” by his bosom buddy John McCain, also made rhetorical mistakes tonight.
When describing social programs, Obama said he’d eliminate some and “make sure that those that do work work better and cheaper.” Yes, it’s colloquial, but it’s grammatically incorrect. When you’re describing how programs work, you must use adverbs [...]

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