The following sentences appear in Word Smart II,
published by the Princeton Review to help students prepare for standardized
exams. In December, after receiving complaints about the violent nature
of some of the sentences used to illustrate vocabulary words, the Princeton
Review announced that it would recall the book, which has been in use
since 1992. Vocabulary words are italicized.
- The cardinal rule at our school is simple: no shooting at the
teachers. If you have to shoot a gun, shoot it at a student or an administrator.
- Living in New York for ten years has made Sally so callous
that to reach her mailbox she steps on the back of the homeless person
who sleeps in the lobby of her apartment building.
- Amanda felt that she was complimenting Lizzie when she said that Lizzie
looked pretty good for a fat woman, but Lizzie took the comment as an
affront.
- The month we spent together in an isolated cabin accorded me
the opportunity to get better acquainted with my abductor.
- Billy demurred when I suggested that he run out into the middle
of the railroad bridge and jump into the chasm just as a freight train
was about to run into him.
- I deplore the use of cattle prods to discipline unruly kindergartners,
and I intend to work toward their elimination.
- Marty took a hammer and began hitting Suzanne over the head with it;
Suzanne asked Marty to desist.
- Sam's pulling a gun and pointing it at my head disquieted me,
to say the least.
- The bloody ax in Bert's hand gave me the distinct impression
that he had been up to no good.
- Students are fickle; one day they love you, the next day they
attach a pipe bomb to the chassis of your car.
- The most ghastly crime ever recorded in these parts was committed
by One-Eye Sam, who rounded up several dozen townspeople and chopped
them into tiny bits.
- "Let's set fire to the town hall," Allie suggested impetuously.
- The ceaseless importuning of her children finally drove Mary
Elizabeth over the brink; she stuffed the entire brood into a canvas
bag and pitched it over the railing of the bridge.
- When his mother accidentally threw away Sheldon's slide rule, he flew
into a paroxysm of rage, hurling a chair through the living-room
window and setting the kitchen on fire.
- We knocked over their snowman, and in reprisal they burned
down our clubhouse.
- In a flimsy effort to get Thomas off the hook, the defense lawyer
propounded a preposterous scenario in which a gun thrown by someone
on the street flew through the window, landed in Thomas's hand, and
accidentally fired six times at Hannah as she scrambled frantically
around the room while Thomas inadvertently shouted, "I'm really going
to kill you now, you insufferable old curmudgeon.
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