would-be grammer nerd.

I don't normally take part in grammar nerdishness, but this is too good to pass up:

Yesterday, on NPR, I was in the car driving with my daughter, listening to a story about "Don't Ask Don't Tell", and the story ended like this:

In one of his recent tweets today, Choi said he missed three verbal and five math questions on the skills test. He passed. But his future and the future of thousands of would-be gay service members remains unclear.

Now, I instantly said, "wait a minute, don't they mean, 'gay would-be service members?' "

The phrase "would-be gay service members" indicated that there are service members who are currently straight who are hoping to be gay. I'm sure that's not what they meant.

Instead they should have said, "gay would-be service members."

Anywhoo, the text of the program is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130704683 the backward wordage is in the last paragraph.