Christmas is a special time of year in our house. Not only is it easy to get my wife and me in the holiday spirit, but we have two boys who live and breathe anything that has to do with Santa Claus. All they're thinking about at this very moment is Santa, Santa, Santa.
This year, the boys had their letters to Santa written by the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Is that too soon? My wife even bought a decorative felt envelope to put them in.
There was just one problem. It took a lot to keep me from editing the letters. What did you expect? I own my own writing and editing business. It's in my blood! :)
As soon as my wife showed me our oldest son's letter, I began squirming in my chair. His letter had 83 words in it – with just two periods. There wasn't even a true list of toys for poor Santa to quickly scan through ... just one giant blob paragraph.
"You can't let him leave it like that!" I said to my wife. "Talk about run-on sentences."
"Oh stop!" she said with a laugh. "It's something we can look back on and laugh at."
In my son's defense, he's 10 and he writes significantly better when he slows down. So I decided to let this one go and chalk it up to the idea that maybe – just maybe – he was so excited about getting that letter to Santa written that his No. 2 pencil never left the paper as he tried to list off every present he could think of in record time.
You can bet it will be discussed, though. I'm sure even Santa expects better grammar.
Speaking of those presents, the requests this year from both boys range from a PlayStation 4 to a gumball machine, a hoverboard, and a horse. The sentence structure may not be what it should be, but these boys do get their point across. Good luck, Santa!
Thanks for reading!
*STEVE GAMEL is the President & Owner of Edit This, LLC, a writing and editing services company located in Denton, TX. Along with being a sports writer for the Denton Record-Chronicle, Steve handles anything involving the written word. Give him a call today to help give your business a clear voice.