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As a child preparing for my middle school entrance exams, I recall my English teacher patiently instructing us in the avoidance of the run-on sentence. I was therefore surprised to see in a recent British universities mailing list a letter from a senior lecturer in English at a prestigious national university, stating: "The course runs more like a workshop, however, an outline of the course is given to the students when they arrive."

I have come to accept that we now have to face undergraduates arriving in our lecture halls without the basics of English grammar, but I didn't realise that the affliction had extended to senior academics.

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