The grammar detective

Essay option 3 was: “Write an essay addressing the question ‘If you could change one law, or one piece of legislation, what would it be and why.’”

Note to self: no question mark.

Curiouser and curiouser. What academic would frame an essay question in that way, I asked myself. Sounded more like a quiz show.

Changing tack, I went back to Google and into Google Images. Where did these images come from? The key words “Baker”, and “college” led me to the answer: all the images were identical to those on the website of Dartmouth College in the US.

No wonder they didn’t look dinki-di! (Yes, very occasionally exclamation marks are the right punctuation choice.)

The website colour schemes and layout were also dead ringers for Dartmouth’s.

After emailing Dartmouth College to alert them to this odd coincidence, I went to the scholarship site’s “Rules” section, fetchingly illustrated with a feather headdress. The internal logic of this section was pitiful: “If either of the six (6) winners …” when there are six options, the word is “any”, not “either”.

Consistency was lacking, too. “The odds of winning depend on the total number of entries received at the conclusion of the contest.” Contest? Hang on …

If this were a true scholarship granting program, I decided, I would eat my thesaurus.

Something more sinister may be closer to the truth. The organiZation may be after the $16 processing fee demanded. There were two payment options for this fee: a money order sent c/o a Sydney law firm or, alternatively, credit card details could be submitted to a “secure” website.

Investigating further, I have discovered that “scholarship scams” are big business in the US. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission website says about 10 per cent of Internet traffic may be fraudulent and lists the telltale signs. Among them: exclamation marks, CAPITAL LETTERS, poor spelling and badly phrased sentences.

About ten Australian university websites were linked to this dubious scholarship program. It’s easy to be taken in. Just remember, if the grammar stinks, something may well be rotten.