Here Are the NSA’s Internal Grammar Advice Columns

The intelligence agency’s Grammar Geek explained things like the difference between “affect” and “effect.”

By Louise Matsakis, Motherboard, Nov. 27, 2017

Five years ago, an employee at the US National Security Agency (NSA), wondered about how to spell the word “cancelled.”

“I looked it up in the dictionary on my desk (Yes, I still have one), and it uses one L, but notes that the two L variety is chiefly British. Why does it seem that I am the only one using 1 L, and does it really matter?” they wrote.

The question was addressed to the Grammar Geek, an advice columnist that provided intelligence officers with writing tips. The column was published in SIDtoday, an internal newsletter distributed to a division of the agency called the Signals Intelligence Directorate. The Government Attic, a website that publishes documents released through Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIAs), published 29 editions of Grammar Geek dating back to 2012 on Monday. It’s not clear whether it obtained every edition in existence (the NSA says some information was withheld).

Read more here.