I'm a copy editor

Dear everyone,

You need periods. See, there’s one right there. And another. I have been seeing sentences without periods, like at the dentist’s office and on the Internet. And that is not good. YOU NEED PERIODS!

That wasn’t a period; that was an exclamation point. You can use an exclamation point instead of a period if you are yelling.

The other one is a question mark. You can use that if you are asking a question. Still, you can use it like a period. You put it at the end of your sentence. This is important. Otherwise, nobody knows when the sentence is over. They will go on to the next sentence and not understand. That would be a problem. It’s a big problem for me.

I almost forgot about commas. Like, if you want to say something, and you want to say something else but in a different way, you can use a comma. It makes the sentence easier to read. There’s two in that sentence. My mom put them there because she is very good at writing. She knows where the commas go.

And that is all I have to say.

From Michael

Watching the Address to Congress

Dear everyone,

I wanna be there and shake Obama’s hand. But he beated John McCain bad. It was like twice as many votes. Bad beat. Seriously bad beat. It was almost 200 votes. That’s my limit.

I like Barack Obama. He is cool. I wonder what he was doing when the last guy was the president.

It is just unfair that those girls get to sleep in the president’s house. They must have like a million guards. Mom says there has never been a girl president, but I would still probably vote for the boy. Unless the girl is more prettier. It’s all about their style.

Barack Obama said he wants people to go to university. Of course I am going to go. I guess that means that it will be against the law to kick people out of school.

It’s almost kind of rude, though, that only Americans can be president. So I basically can never be president. That is rude. What about Indians? Indians are nice. You should be able to move from Asia and get the best job. I could pretend I was an American so I could be president. But I probably would not get away with it.

Now there is some other guy talking. (TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: That would be Bobby Jindal.) Like, he said he wasn’t going to say any more, and then he kept talking. He needs cream for his forehead. I don’t want this guy to be president, because he doesn’t talk loud enough. He makes really long words, like way longer than “ketchup”. Words like “consequence” and “opportunity” and “responsibility”. And those are the three words he likes to say. (TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: HAHAHAHAHA.) I think he’s weird. I don’t know what he’s saying.

I want my mom to be president, or at least vice president. That way, I could live in that house.

From Michael

Why didn't my mom see this coming?

Dear everyone,

My mom says if there’s no tooth fairy, I don’t get money for my teeth. I want to get money, but I can’t believe it if it isn’t real.

Now I am thinking that maybe there is no such thing as angels. I think they might just be a story.

My mom says that my grampy has studied a lot and he is sure there are angels, but I think maybe he made a mistake. I think he might just think that because he is a church person. Church people might believe things that aren’t real. I like to go and watch church sometimes when my grampy is there, but I’m not a church person. I do like the bread at church. It would be good to have bread like that that was the size of my house. It would probably take me three days to eat it all.

If it isn’t real, I can’t believe in it. I can only believe in things that are real. Things like Cleopatra that are in books about real things. I know that Cleopatra was real. There are some books that are just stories and some books that are about things that are real.

Maybe angels aren’t real. I don’t know that for sure, but I don’t know how I would find out. I don’t think God needs guards. That doesn’t make sense. And I am pretty sure that angels are guards for God.

From Michael