This is c&p verbatim from a newsletter published by the School of Social Work's Promise Heights program (which is a Good Thing on its own merits, but jesus christ).
Dear Friends of Promise Heights:
The University of Maryland, Baltimore and faith based and non-profit organizations have formed a unique partnership to improve educational, health, and developmental outcomes for children and youth by creating a holistic, community-centered education continuum that serves child and families living in Upton/Druid Heights communities of West Baltimore – Promise Heights. By joining forces, this partnership will level the playing field for socioeconomically disadvantaged children by developing and implementing a long term strategic plan that incorporates evidence-based elements of nationally recognized best practice models and will build on the strengths, assets, and knowledge of local stakeholders.
Setting aside the glaring grammatical and punctuation errors, can anyone diagram that last sentence? It's got two "By [doing X], Y" phrases referring to one another and it's reached buzzword saturation point. Any more buzzwords added to this sentence will just fall right off again, unable to go into solution.
What I don't understand is why they think this is in any way a good or pleasant or interesting or inviting way to explain what they do. Even if people can follow the tortuous path through their sentence construction and work out from context what some of the more improbable phrases mean, why would they want to? It puts everybody off. It's utterly distasteful and makes me itch.
SSW is so earnest about Doing Good Things For The Community, because it's sort of their purpose, but they go about it so breathtakingly wrong-headedly. Watching them try to get funding is sort of like watching a turtle try to have sex with a sneaker: it's so ludicrous it's funny, but it's also very sad.
You can make your sentence as long as you want it to be by using hyphens! : )
ReplyDelete"By joining forces, this partnership will level the playing field for socioeconomically disadvantaged children by developing and implementing a long term strategic plan that incorporates evidence-based elements of nationally recognized best practice models and will build on the strengths, assets, and knowledge of local stakeholders."
ReplyDeleteLooks like the plight of our inner cities has been finally solved.
I know! It's so nice to be able to relax and not worry about those pressing concerns any more.
ReplyDeleteSSW is famous for this sort of thing. They try awkwardly to apply for grants and then subside in a welter of buzzwords whenever anyone asks them what it is they intend to do with the grant money, and they have repeatedly made the typo "pubic" for "public." Luckily they have me to point this out.