A retired schoolteacher from South Carolina is drawing attention for what everyone assumes retired schoolteachers do: She proofread and graded a letter someone sent her.

​This particular letter had come from President Trump:

Loyal Scaiaholics know I won’t shut up about how I don’t blog about politics, only the hilarious things that happen because of politics.

Having said that, I can identify with the president about how it feels to get work back with edits scribbled all over place.

In high school, and it’s not weird that I remember this, our English teacher would make us take turns going up to the chalkboard [Kids, back in the day, we had what are called, “chalkboards.” They’re like marker boards, but at the end of the day, you got to bang the erasers in each other’s faces and make yourselves cough. That’s how you entertained yourself in my day, not eating Tide pods.] and diagram sentences.

He had us diagram Shakespeare sonnets. I vaguely recall those were tough because we didn’t understand a lot of the words Shakespeare used.

More vividly, I recall being told to diagram a sentence while we were reading The Scarlet Letter.

“Don’t get nervous, Scaia,” I thought to myself, as I started diagramming. But I distracted myself, accidentally drawing the line between subject and verb right in the middle of Hester Prynne’s name!

“Prynne is a verb!?” I heard my English teacher yell out.

At Ball State, one of my journalism professors was much more succinct. He just circled a phrase in a script I had written and wrote, “Gag me!” I believe that was over my use of the word, “alleged.” His point was I would never say “Lem allegedly shot Carmine in the rump” if I were talking about this at a bar instead of writing a script for a newscast. I’d say, “Police say Lem shot Carmine in the rump.”

I say this because, listen, President Trump [or, more likely, President Trump’s staff], whether Republican or Democrat, these kinds of notes can help you improve your writing. I can now diagram sentences [which, now that I think of it, doesn’t help me pick up women as much I was hoping], and I also feel ways about the Oxford comma.

Spoilers: I’m not a fan. “Oxford comma” just sounds stuffy, like you have to be a Rhodes Scholar to use it. Maybe if it were called, “Relaxing Saturday Afternoon Comma” or “Attractive Lady Comma,” I’d be more willing to work with it.

​The president isn’t the only one who struggles with this. Congress actually had to pass a law saying things should be written with words people understand. And 82 people voted against it!

If both parties work together, we can nip this epidemic of government-speak right in the rump.