It’s been over a year since our friend MG has committed an act of textual assault (or at least since I’ve noticed). I’d begun to think he’d been reformed, and that perhaps he’d turned over a few new leaves, as opposed to “leafs”. But now, in writing Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile, MG Siegler has begun to slip back into his old, dark ways — the man he once was coming back to haunt him, reclaiming his soul.

I’m talking, of course, about this atrocity of a first paragraph:

This morning’s bombshell news that AT&T would be buying T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started addressing those already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier?

No, MG, this morning’s news doesn’t leave a lot of questions. You do, starting with your second sentence.

“T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them?”

I’m not sure, MG, do T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? You’re the one writing the article, not me.

“AT&T customers want to know what it means for them?”

Or, are these rhetorical questions, MG? Are you expressing shock and disbelief at the fact that AT&T customers want to know what this merger means for them?

“Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them?”

Oh, no, I get it, MG; it’s not that at all. You just don’t know how to use a question mark.

Really, MG? A question mark? I can understand a semicolon or an em dash — they’re not usually taught in second grade or anything — but a question mark? You don’t know that it’s supposed to be used on questions that you, the writer, are asking, as opposed to simple sentences that are about questions? If you’re making a statement that “T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them,” then shouldn’t you be using a period? Why do I have to explain this to you? Is it really that difficult to understand? Do you just like using question marks? If that’s the case, there are all sorts of ways to write a sentence which calls for a question mark at the end, so why waste the opportunity on something horribly, horribly wrong?

MG quickly recovers, using a colon properly in the final sentence of the paragraph, and continuing for the rest of the article with no readability-compromising errors. But the resurgence of his former tendencies concern and frighten me, and I recommend that we keep a close eye on him. MG is our friend, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that I hate seeing him like this.

I decided to give it a try, and I’ma let you finish but Beyonce had one of these days I’ll bet your life on the road today and they are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients. The experience is as exhilarating and possibly confusing as a first step in the right direction for them to become more involved in their children can vary greatly due to company policy and procedures for their use. Unfortunately, it’s all about themselves and their families in their homes and their lives are nothing.

The problem is that there is anything you would not believe how much I loved them all. Google Scribe of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research: Online Press Releases and Newsletters fast and elegant 3D photo gallery on their website and buy this product again and again and I’ma let you finish. There are no comments for this user yet and can not believe that there is anything… I’ma get you something to do with themselves on and off the field and then press the button to the right of the people who are not interested in them.

To be fair, there are not any posts in the last few years and I have been able to find anything in these search results from RT on your Google searches by subscribing to the feed via email to state their case and their ownership of their owners and are strictly for viewing and printing of these books. I’m sure that some people might believe that they are not therefore to be understood that these embodiments are provided solely by this site are property of their respective owners, but with their own unique style of musical composition and performance of their duties and responsibilities of their jobs and their proportion against the total number of page views delivered based on the seller and the listing broker as an agent of the present invention is to provide and maintain their own calendars and schedules for their employees.

There is a certain element of surrealism to the results, and you can not print this page this way, they can become and to remain in their own right and do not want to be related to their particular field or industry in which they are attached. It’s almost as if Andre Breton had anything to do with themselves on and off the field and then press the button to the right of the people who are not interested in them. Google Scribe is a haunting look into the digital psyche of the American Chemical Society and American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Pain Society Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved • Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

As an actual writing aid, though, I don’t find it very useful.

You guys.

Look at this. Look at this article by MG Siegler.

Are you seeing this? Last two sentences of the first paragraph:

After all, they were getting great publicity for giving away something that was already free (GrandCentral — which is now known as Google Voice). We wondered if they wouldn’t pull the same stunt in the future. Well, it’s the future; and they are.

MG wrote that. He wrote that. Em dashes and semicolons were the very first things I ever passive-aggressively taught him. And now he just used them the way they’re supposed to be.

UPDATE: Well, technically, “and” doesn’t go after a semicolon, but I’ve already given MG a pass on beginning sentences with “and” as a stylistic quirk, so he can do it with semicolons too.

Also parentheticals. All three, in the same paragraph. Wow.

And look at this, right at the start of the next paragraph:

Again, this is actually a very nice thing they’re doing, but it’s also an ingenious way to promote what Google clearly considers to be one of its killer products: Google Voice.

Omigod he just did the same thing with a colon too eeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

MG, you have no idea how proud I am of you; I never thought this day would come so fast. Just think, someday maybe you’ll even spot a place where my own punctuation compromises readability.

Now, all I have to make fun of about you is your Apple fanboyism and obsession with Twitter, making me just like everyone else in the world. Unless, of course, you so much as misplace the acute mark in the word “cliché” (which you have no excuse for because on your Mac it’s as simple as hitting option-E before typing the E). If you do that, I will not hesitate to waste four hours of my life ranting about it in order to get maybe two or three extra pageviews.

How inspiring. I’ve been wanting to do more of these. Thus, without further ado:

Yesterday, MG published an article called “An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One“, because apparently there aren’t enough reviews which compare the Nexus One to the iPhone. Actually, there’s no shortage of them, just like how there’s no shortage of MG Siegler’s use of the phrase “no shortage of”. Speaking of MG Siegler’s predictable writing, let’s see what he’s predictably done wrong this time:

Last week, I attended the Google Android “Nexus One” event. As you may have heard, they gave many of us in the audience the device to try out. I decided that before I wrote anything about it (other than saying on television that it’s a “nice little device“), I would give it a real shot. So here I am, a week later, with my thoughts on it. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a full review or overview, for that, see our review here. Instead, I’m going to come at this from the perspective of a pretty hardcore iPhone user of the past two-plus years.

A quick skim of this first paragraph may lead you to believe that MG has miraculously managed to finish a single paragraph without screwing anything up. Unfortunately, the second-to-last sentence falls apart if you’re the sort of person who actually reads things. MG is trying to make the sentence read like this, but read it aloud:

To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a full review or overview, for that, see our review here.

It sounds like this.

MG, have I frightened you into using commas instead of semicolons or em dashes? It’s not that you should always use a comma instead of a more “sophisticated” punctuation mark, it’s that you should use each one correctly. Those bold words were the chance you’d been waiting for to flourish a semicolon or em dash — in fact, either could have worked there. But you missed it. Fear overcame you, and you cowered behind the perceived safety of a comma, huddling for warmth and whimpering like a puppy. Alas, the comma was not safe this time, and now nobody will adopt you from the animal shelter and give you a loving home, where you can frolic and chase frisbees and get Siegly treats when you’re a good boy.

You’ve been very bad this time, MG. Stop chewing my shoes and get your muddy paws off the couch.

Moving on:

And to start off, I’ll come right out and say what everyone will want to know: Do I think the Nexus One is better than the iPhone?

I don’t care what you think, because you’re not supposed to capitalize the next word after a colon. It’s not two periods on top of each other, it’s a mid-sentence indicator of logical consequence. I’m not going to waste time explaining the big words to you, so concentrate on the mid-sentence part: colons don’t end the sentence. The only time you should send a big hulking capital letter barreling into the reader’s visual cortex is, other than proper nouns or names, at the beginning of a sentence. Otherwise you might cause people’s perceptions of reality to break down and turn their lives into the plot of Vanilla Sky. You are transforming millions of innocent TechCrunch readers into Tom Cruise, MG. Is that something you’d wish on anybody? Do you want that on your conscience? I thought not. Now fix it.

As the article continues, MG’s performance is remarkably passable. There are moments like this:

It’s hard to describe just how great Google Voice is on Android. When I set it up, I had to confirm maybe three or four things, and I was all ready to go. In two minutes, my Google Voice number completely took over my Nexus One. This included getting not only all Google Voice incoming calls and voicemails, but doing outbound calls with my Google Voice number as well. This is absolutely the future of number portability, and that no doubt has the carriers — and likely even Apple – spooked.

The end of this paragraph nearly brought a tear to my eye. It doesn’t really matter to me that the preceding sentences are choppy and mediocre; MG used em dashes to convey an emphatic pause, just like I taught him. He’s all grown up now!

Maps offers a number of features on the Nexus One that aren’t on the iPhone native version. This includes Latitude (which can run in the background), and Navigation. Other Google apps, like Google Sky Map and Google Goggles are also pretty cool, and useful to varying degrees, and again, only available for Android.

Or maybe not.

I’m aware that the Oxford comma is a matter of preference. Whether you choose to use it, or choose not to use it, there’s usually no problem. But for god’s sake, be consistent from one sentence to the other!

Now, there is, of course, a difference: the first sentence, in which MG did use the comma, had those pesky parentheses to make matters confusing. The problem with that is that no, there’s no difference at all, because you don’t just randomly insert a comma after a closing parenthesis for no reason. “Latitude (which can run in the background)” is the first item, “Navigation” is the other, and if you’re going to put a comma before the separating “and,” then you should also do that in the very next fucking sentence where you do the very same fucking thing.

Obviously, this issue (background apps) has been talked about in the past ad-naseum, so I won’t dwell on it here.

First of all, there’s no hyphen. Second of all, it’s “ad nauseam.” Christ, MG, you’re destroying Latin too.

Fortunately, MG continues the article for about 1200 more words without breaking things ad nauseam, no longer distracting the reader from his rather well-thought out arguments with slippery linguistic banana peels. In fact he manages to finish the whole article without another punctuation debac— oh, wait…

And it’s good to have two companies that can play off each other and push innovation — while at the same time, changing the industry.

I didn’t tell you to use em dashes instead of commas all the time, MG! Ugh, this is going to turn into an endless back-and-forth whack-a-mole game with you, I know it.