[greymule]

I admit that after I took my Fed tests, I had no idea that I had "passed with flying colors" as they told me later. We had to get an 85, and if they told me I had flunked, I wouldn't have been surprised. But so many of the questions involved embossed stamps on equipment, balls going over a media area, colored gloves, confining people to the bench, tobacco-like substances, and other things that have nothing to do with the game. I just guessed on those. Usually, at least two answers could be eliminated as absurd (though in Fed, you can't assume anything). Plus, I took both softball and baseball on the same day, which added to the confusion.

And yes, the test is terribly written. So what would it cost them to have a professional editor do the job? A couple of hundred bucks? If Educational Testing Service wrote the SAT that badly, they'd have to rescind half the questions. So ESL, the "tricky" language may well be simply "flawed" language.

Carl Childress knows both rules and English. I'm surprised he hasn't become involved, because the rule books are badly written, too, with dozens of textbook examples of grammatical mistakes. And it's not simply to be a purist with the language. Grammar mistakes very often contribute to misunderstanding. Examples abound in the rule books and case books.

Whowefoolin: Could you go over that math equation again? If you meant minus a times minus a, that equals a-squared.