The Founding Fathers needed a copy editor

Grammar wonks parse the documents that helped establish America. Plus, a reliable ally criticizes Romney’s messaging; Katie Holmes gets a new PR firm, Southwest gets another ad agency, vacationers get their own photographers, and more.

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There’s no question the Founding Fathers were brilliant men, but they could’ve used a copy editor, according to several grammar experts interviewed by the Tribune Newspapers’ Heidi Stevens. The men who drafted the nation’s most important documents capitalized words that didn’t require it, misused punctuation, and made famous the questionable term “more perfect union.” Stevens acknowledges that criticizing the Founding Fathers amounts to fighting words, but that didn’t stop Martha Brockenbrough, founder of National Grammar Day and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, from saying, “I’m pretty sure James Madison was drunk when he wrote the second amendment.”

Mitt Romney, who hopes to follow in the footsteps of the Founding Fathers, is taking heat from an unlikely source—The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Journal‘s editorial board says the presumptive GOP nominee is wasting an opportunity to defeat an incumbent president because of the campaign’s poor messaging.

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