>From: Terry_Bowden@f170.n771.z3.fidonet.org (Terry Bowden)

It is not infrequent that one reads an otherwise well-written piece of
prose to find abuse of the English language.  The would-be author
should be ever vigilant to the possibility of abuse.  Here is a
splendid, albeit juvenile, example of what I mean.  Its source is not
known to me.  I've copied the text as I received it from an anonymous
donor.

      The World According to Student Bloopers
      === ===== ========= == ======= ========

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is
receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay.  I
have pasted together the following "history" of the world from
certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout
the United States, from eighth grade through college level.  Read
carefully, and you will learn a lot.

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies.  They lived in
the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot.  The climate of the Sarah
is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas
of the dessert are cultivated by irritation.  The Egyptians built the
Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube.  The pramids are a
range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures.    In the first book of
the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.
One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God
asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma.  Jacob, son of
Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark.  Jacob was a patriarch who
brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to
it.  One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw.  Moses
led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is
bread made without any ingredients.     Afterwards, Moses went up on
Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king
skilled at playing the liar.  He fought with the Philatelists, a race
of people who lived in Biblical times.  Solomon, one of David's sons,
had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history.  The Greeks invented
three kinds of columns-Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic.  They also had
myths.  A myth is a female moth.  One myth says that the mother of
Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable.
Achilles appeared in "The Iliad", by Homer.  Homer also wrote "The
Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured
on his journey.  Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by
another man of that name.