For example, I can tell you the distinction between perfect and imperfect. I could elaborate on the uses of the subjunctive, and at least gesture at its use as a social class marker. I can use polyptoton, epimone, and ploce, although I generally consider that sort of thing cheating.
I was an English major, and one of the things we can do is transform mere words into rhetoric. I'm not among the best, but even I can tell that the SPJA needs one of us, and needs us badly.
What I'm saying here is that the recent press releases from Anime Expo, and from Mr. Lattanzio in particular, have been shoddy to an extreme that verges on insulting. Their words are ill-chosen, their imagery is unclear, and their metaphors insipid. Even the rudest mechanics of their language — agreement in number and tense, comma placement, and other niceties of writing — fall short.
This is costing the SPJA credibility. I can't say it more plainly than that. People are reading these statements, shaking their heads, and dismissing the SPJA Board of Directors as a mere fountain of buzzwords, when in reality the directors are ill-served by their PR staff.
Something has to be done. Here's my advice to the SPJA: if you care about this battle of ideas — if you aren't willing to roll over and vanish from history entirely — find someone who can write and make sure he sees everything you're considering setting before the public. Words are everything in a situation like this. I would say they are the only thing. Millions of people have nothing to judge you by save by what you write, and you have already made yourselves look like fools.
You cannot afford to let that happen again.
This is part of an ongoing series on the pre-AX 2010 trainwreck. Please read the others if you'd like.