A retired high school English teacher made headlines for her excoriation of what she described as a “stylistically appalling” letter that she received from the White House.
The letter, signed by President Donald Trump, would barely have received a passing grade if a high schooler had written it, Yvonne Mason, who retired last year after a 17-year teaching career in South Carolina, told The Greenville News last week.
“If it had been written in middle school, I’d give it a C or C-plus,” Mason said. “If it had been written in high school, I’d give it a D.”
The veteran teacher shared an image of the letter — covered with corrections she’d made in purple ink — on Facebook earlier this month.
“Have y’all tried grammar and style check?” Mason wrote at the top of the document. “OMG this is WRONG!” she wrote elsewhere, pointing out a capitalization error.
Mason said at the time that she’d be mailing the letter back to Trump.
Mason told the Greenville newspaper she received the letter from the White House after penning a note to the president beseeching him to meet individually with families of the victims of February’s Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.
She acknowledged that the letter ― which did not specifically address her suggestion but touched on school safety and gun violence more generally ― was likely written by a staff member and not the president himself.
Still, Mason said she expected more from a letter from the White House.
“When you get letters from the highest level of government, you expect them to be at least mechanically correct,” she said.