Your Grammar Nazi - "Quality"

For years, language mavens have been telling me this is a lost cause, but I refuse to give up.

The word "quality" is a noun, not an adjective. It cannot modify another noun unless it is itself modified by an adjective, making it part of  an adjectival phrase.

From Firedoglake:

43% of Republicans think the Olive Garden is a “quality source of authentic ethnic food”;  41% of Democrats did not.

Haha, dumb rubes. But that phrase "quality source of authentic ethnic food" does not mean what you think it means.  In fact, it means nothing.

"Quality" is a neutral noun until and unless it is modified by an adjective like "high" or "low" or "poor" or "good."

Do 43 percent of repugs think the Olive Garden is a high-quality source of authentic ethnic food or do they think it is a low-quality source of authentic ethnic food?  Without the modifier, the noun "quality" means nothing.

Wrong: "We need more quality schools."

Correct: "We need to improve the quality of schools." Or: "We need more high-quality schools." Or:  "We need fewer poor-quality schools."

I blame the misuse of  "quality" on poor-quality schools that fail to teach students how to diagram sentences. Yes, diagramming sentences is tedious and time-consuming - I myself diagrammed thousands of sentences in seventh grade - but it's the only way to ensure that students understand how the parts of speech fit together in a sentence.  No one who has diagrammed sentences could mistake the noun "quality" for an adjective.

Olive Garden, of course, is not a source of authentic ethnic food of any quality; it is a source of genetically-modified, high-fructose-corn-syrup-infused, factory-farmed, industrialized, corporatized glop.

And its quality is poor.