Know your audience (Wild card)

We've covered a lot in our crash course in editing. The majority of what we've looked at, though, has dealt with the actual grammar issues involved in writing.

But there's one more important factor we need to look at: audience.

It's of the utmost importance that journalists know their audiences. You don't want to write something that will blatantly offend a large portion of your primary audience.

The Associated Press released a story on Monday about the IRA in Northern Ireland. Having studied abroad in Ireland and traveled to Northern Ireland, specifically to the city mentioned in the story, I cringed a little when I saw what they called the city:

"The queen of England is wanted for war crimes in Ireland and not wanted on Irish soil," a masked Real IRA man told more than 200 supporters rallying in a cemetery in Northern Ireland's second-largest city of Londonderry.

 To anyone who wouldn't otherwise know, there is nothing wrong with the name Londonderry. Technically, it is the "official" name of the city. However, if you go to Northern Ireland and refer to it as Londonderry, you will get countless people glaring at you and telling you that no, it's just Derry. The London part comes from when the British took over-- a fact that most Northern Irish are still very upset about.

This is a case of knowing your audience. When referring to the city, especially in the context of people in the city being angry, it probably would have been more appropriate to call the city by the name its residents do: Derry.

Pogatchnik, Shawn. "Real IRA condemns queen's planned visit to Ireland." Associated Press. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110425/ap_on_re_eu/eu_nireland_ira_dissidents. 25 April 2011.

Punctuation Station (Misused punctuation)

Punctuation can make or break what you're trying to say in writing. It serves the purpose of incorporating "breaths" into sentences by breaking up the sentence a bit. Periods, exclamation points and question marks are the easiest punctuation to figure out. They go at the end of a sentence. Easy peasy.

Punctuation that goes inside the sentence can be more difficult, though. Commas and semicolons also provide a pause in sentences, but without creating a complete rest. Such punctuation is extremely important for setting off parts of a sentence from each other.

One of the best examples of this is the comparison between the sentences "Let's eat Grandma," and "Let's eat, Grandma." An itty bitty comma makes the two sentences have drastically different meanings.

Semicolons are the middle ground between periods and commas. They indicate a longer break than a comma, but not the full stop of a period. Semicolons are particularly useful in connecting independent clauses. Sometimes, though, semicolons are overused.

Take a look:

Trump and other critics said the long form contained information Obama wanted to hide; in fact, both pages of the long form contains essentially the same information; the difference is that one page includes signatures by Obama's mother and an attending physician.

This snippet from a USA Today story titled "Obama releases his Hawaii birth certificate" uses not one, but two semicolons within one chunk of the writing.

In this case, the semicolons don't add much to the overall function of the writing. The clauses would have had the same meaning if written as individual sentences. And the doubling up of semicolons makes the phrase feel cluttered.

A better way to approach this would be:

Trump and other critics said the long form contained information Obama wanted to hide when, in fact, both pages of the long form contains essentially the same information. The difference is that one page includes signatures by Obama's mother and an attending physician.

 Written as such, we get two cohesive sentences instead of just a clump of words. Making the part about the page of signatures a separate sentence also makes that bit of writing stronger that it was when set off by a semicolon.




Jackson, David. "Obama releases his Hawaii birth certificate." USA Today. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obama-releases-birth-records/1?csp=hf. 27 April 2011.

All you need to say is "He said..." (Poor word choice)

Journalistic writing is about facts. We don't exaggerate, we avoid flowery language, we get to the point, we don't show bias.

If something was spoken, we say it was "said." Terms such as "declared" or "exclaimed" add an element of bias to stories because they carry with them certain connotations. By saying someone "declared" or "exclaimed," you're making a judgment call about the emotions driving what the person said. And that's not ok.

Clearly, no one informed the writers at The Right Perspective of this. Look at how they wrote about a radio session with Rush Limbaugh:

Rush exclaimed that he would love to see everything Obama has done legislatively while president get erased, but he deals with “‘what is,’ not ‘what ifs’.”

“‘If’ is for children, and we have certain things that are the reality of the day and need to dealt with,” Rush said.

“There is no magic wand that can get Obama un-elected,” Rush declared.

In three sentences, all containing quotes, "said"was only used once. This is poor word choice on the part of the Right Perspective.

In your own writing, make sure to keep it simple. He said, she said, we said, they said. Don't make assumptions about the emotion behind a statement by using words like "declared," "exclaimed," "boasted," etc.

NewsGuy. "Rush: Birthers in a 'Fantasy.'" The Right Perspective. http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/04/07/rush-birthers-in-a-fantasy/. 7 April 2011.

Are you sure this counts as news? (No news peg)

One of the most obvious elements of good journalism is that your story has to have a point. It has to be newsworthy, something that people care about.

In celebrity news, it's quite easy to find stories that have no relevance to anyone other than the people the stories are about. Does it really matter to any of us if Sean Penn and Scarlett Johansson are dating or not? No.

But the entertainment is rife with such stories, and the majority of the time they have no real news peg.

Look at this story from E! Online:

Blake Lively is a lady in red.

Just a few weeks after Drew Barrymore went ginger, the Gossip girl debuts a new hue at Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World gala.

So is this for a new role? Or is Blake just showing us how influential Drew is?

Where's the news peg? So she dyed her hair. Is there a reason we should care? Not really. Make sure your stories can always answer the question "So what?" A story about someone dying her hair is nothing but filler.

Riley, Katherine. "Red Alert! Blake Lively Dyes Her Hair." E! Online. http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b238631_red_alert_blake_lively_dyes_her_hair.html?cmpid=sn-000000-twitterfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=twitterfeed&utm_campaign=twitterfeed_topstories&dlvrit=48939. 26 April 2011.

Whom cares about who? Wait... (Wrong pronoun)

Who, whom, whoever, whomever. I would venture a guess that the figuring out the difference between these words is in the top 5 of most difficult grammar rules. It's certainly one that trips me up on a consistent basis.

Some writers and linguists argue that "whom" is on the way out in usage, with most people defaulting to the less formal seeming "who." Well, that's fine and dandy, but until "whom" is officially out of usage, we need to make sure we know how it properly fits into a sentence.

The simplest breakdown of the who vs. whom dilemma is this: Who functions as the subject of a sentence, whom functions as the object. Sounds easy enough, right?

It can be tricky to determine whether the word is actually being used correctly. Even the pros get it wrong sometimes.

Take the following headline from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Whom will Wilson replace on SF Giants' roster?

What do you think? Correct usage or not?

If you said correct, good job!

The headline's use of "whom" is right on. Wilson is doing the replacing, making him the subject of the headline. What he is replacing a somebody on the SF Giants' roster. Consequently, whom must be used in order to keep the person being replaced objective.

If it was Wilson being replaced rather than doing the replacing, then "who" would have been appropriate. In that case, the headline would have to read: Who will replace Wilson on SF Giants' roster?

In that case, neither Wilson nor the roster is the subject, so a nominative pronoun is needed to be the subject. Thus, who.

In the matter of who vs. whom, one little letter makes all the difference, so make sure you understand the usage of both words to avoid getting thrown off.



Schulman, Henry. "Whom will Wilson replace on SF Giants' roster?" San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/05/SPRE1IPMVU.DTL. 25 April 2011.

Seeking: A verb to go with our noun (Main noun too far from main verb)

 Writing, especially journalistic writing, should be straightforward. It shouldn't require the skills of a detective to find the subject and verb of a sentence.

But alas, every once in a while the main noun and main verb of a sentence end up so far separated from each other that it's hard to determine which verb the main noun is meant to be partnered with.

Luckily, issues with a main noun being too far from a main verb are easily fixed. Most of the time the fix is as simple as cutting out a few unnecessary words in the sentence.

Here's an example from a New York Times article discussing how certain fish eaten in Thailand are host to a parasite that can cause cancer:

The raw fish that is so avidly consumed in the stilt houses that sit among rice paddies and wetlands of the country’s northern provinces contain parasites that can accumulate in the liver and lead to a deadly cancer.

Let's ignore for the moment that the writer switched from referring to fish as singular (fish that is) to plural (The raw fish....contain, rather than contains). A second issue in this sentence is that the main noun, fish, is too far from the main verb, contain. The sentence tries to paint a detailed picture of the environment in which the first is eaten, but in doing so creates a rift between the two most important elements of the sentence.

The sentence can be fixed just by cutting out a few words:

The raw fish that is so avidly consumed in the country's northern provinces contains parasites that can accumulate in the liver and lead to a deadly cancer.

We maintain the point that the fish is eaten frequently throughout the provinces, but without losing the connection between the main noun and the main verb.

While it's good to add in details to make your writing more colorful, make sure that those details don't overshadow the important parts of your sentences. It's crucial that the reader be able to connect the main noun and main verb of a sentence without getting lost in the middle because there's too much separation between the two elements.



Fuller, Thomas. "In Thailand, Love of Food Carries Deadly Risks." The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/world/asia/26iht-thailand.html?ref=world. 25 April 2011.

Don't just sit there, get active! (Passive voice)

 One of the toughest obstacles facing any writer is the challenge of maintaining active voice throughout the writing. Active voice is what keeps a story interesting, yet it's easy to fall into passive voice when writing.

When a story is written in an active voice, it means that the subject of the sentence is the one performing the action. In passive voice, the doer of the action becomes the object rather than the subject. The doer is acted upon, rather than acting itself.

In this example from the New York Times, passive voice is turned to in telling about the deaths of four people.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least four people were killed in the southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday in bombings that struck two buses carrying Pakistani naval employees, a senior naval official said. At least 56 people were wounded.

The sentence could be made stronger by using the active voice. In this case, that would mean making the bombings perform the action:

Bombings that struck two buses carrying Pakistani naval employees in the southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday killed at least four people. 

The original sentence had the passive voice construction of "who had what done to it by whom" (four people were killed by bombings). The new sentence follows the active voice construction of "who did what to whom" (bombings killed four people).

It's easy to fall into the trap of passive voice, but for stronger, more engaging writing, you're always better off sticking with active voice.


Masood, Salman. "4 Killed in Bus Bombings in Pakistan." The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/asia/27pakistan.html?ref=world. 26 April 2011.

Is that really what you meant to say? (Misplaced modifier)

Sometimes we say things and they come out meaning something other than what we intended. The same thing can easily happen in writing.

As mentioned before, words have a lot of power. Part of that power is determining how we interpret what is being said. When words are organized poorly, a different interpretation of the sentence can be created than is actually meant. This is often the result of misplaced modifiers.


A misplaced modifier is a word, phrase or clause that doesn't point clearly and directly to what it's supposed to modify. Take this example from the Minneapolis Star Tribune's article "Hudson priest charged with stealing $10K."

The article starts off with the following:

The deposed pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hudson, Wis., has been charged with stealing more than $10,000 from a parish charity account to feed his gambling addiction.

Now, being intelligent people, we can assume fairly easily that the meaning of this sentence is that the priest was stealing to fund his gambling addiction. The money he was stealing was from a parish charity account.

How the sentence is worded, though, muddles that meaning a little bit. By placing "to feed his gambling addiction" right after the mention of the account, without setting the two phrases off by a comma, the sentence seems to read that the priest was the stealing the money from a parish account created to feed his gambling addiction. Not at all what was meant.

Here are some ways to clarify the sentence:

 The deposed pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hudson, Wis., has been charged with stealing more than $10,000, to feed his gambling addiction, from a parish charity account.

The deposed pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hudson, Wis., has been charged with stealing more than $10,000 from a parish charity account in order to feed his gambling addiction.

 The deposed pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hudson, Wis., has been charged with stealing more than $10,000 from a parish charity account, to feed his gambling addiction. 

All three ways make it obvious that the money the priest has been stealing is to feed his gambling addiction. There's no ambiguity or misplacement of the modifier that makes it sound like he was stealing from an account specifically set up to feed his gambling addiction.

To avoid confusion in your writing, read over what you've written to make sure that you're saying what you actually intend to say.


Walsh, Paul. "Hudson priest charged with stealing $10K." Star Tribune. http://www.startribune.com/local/east/119323764.html. 6 April 2011.

Take a breath there! (Wordiness)

It's been pointed out to me several times over the course of my 23 years that, sometimes when I'm talking, I just keep going without even taking a breath. I've made a conscious effort not do this since realizing that people were missing out on what I was actually saying because they were more focused on seeing how long I could make it without a breath.

The same thing can happen with writing. In journalistic writing, it's important to get straight to the point. The more you drag things out, the more likely it is that your readers are going to get bored or wonder when the sentence or paragraph is going to take a break.

When you have a sentence that is cluttered with so many words that it becomes difficult to follow, it's called wordiness.

Here's an example from a New York Times article titled "Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees":

Yet for all the limitations of the files, they still offer an extraordinary look inside a prison that has long been known for its secrecy and for a struggle between the military that runs it — using constant surveillance, forced removal from cells and other tools to exert control — and detainees who often fought back with the limited tools available to them: hunger strikes, threats of retribution and hoarded contraband ranging from a metal screw to leftover food.

That six line paragraph is actually one sentence. Even with the sentence broken up with dashes to set off a chunk of qualifiers, the sentence still feels cluttered. It would be much better broken down into more than one sentence.

The sentence could be rewritten in the following way:

Yet for all the limitations of the files, they still offer an extraordinary look inside a prison that has long been known for its secrecy and for a struggle between the military that runs it and detainees who often fought back with the limited tools available to them. While the military uses constant surveillance, forced removal from cells and other tools to exert control, detainees turn to hunger strikes, threats of retribution and hoarded contraband.

 While there is still a lot of information in the 2 sentences, it is significantly easier to digest the information when it is split up.

When it comes to writing, keep it short and sweet. Make sure your writing takes a breath once in a while!

Glaberson, William, Andrew W. Lehren and Charlie Savage. "Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees." The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/world/guantanamo-files-lives-in-an-american-limbo.html. 24 April 2011.

Dead on the first word (Dead construction)

Any good writer is fully aware of the power of words. The way something is worded can make or break its meaning and the strength the sentence carries.

What less people are aware of is the fact that there are certain sentence constructions that can make a sentence dead on arrival. Such sentences organize their words in a way that causes the sentences to have less "oomph" than they otherwise would.

This type of sentence structure is called, fittingly, dead construction.

In dead construction, words called expletives take up space and add no actual value or function to the sentence. According to When Words Collide, "They not only add clutter but also often rob the sentence of its power by shifting emphasis from what could be a strong verb to a weaker construction-- a linking verb."

The most common dead construction sentences begin with forms of to be.

Here's an example from an NPR blog:

There was one big open question after researchers revealed that the iPhone keeps an unencrypted log of location data: Is there a way to turn it off?

The sentence isn't completely terrible the way it is, but the dead construction makes it a boring sentence. All it would take to make the sentence significantly stronger would be to rearrange the words a bit. Take a look:

One big open question remained after researchers revealed that the iPhone keeps an unencrypted log of location data: Is there a way to turn it off?

This gets the reader into the meat of the sentence much more quickly than in the original construction. The second part of the sentence could be made stronger also, simply by changing the wording of the question to "Can it be turned off?" 

To make your sentences stronger, cut out unnecessary words and make sure that the sentence fully capitalizes on its potential word power. You don't want your writing to be a cemetery for dead sentences!

Peralta, Eyder. "Reports: There's no way to keep iPhone data from collecting location data." NPR. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/04/25/135712946/reports-theres-no-way-to-keep-iphone-from-collecting-location-data. 25 April 2011.

Consistency, please! (Parallelism)

Parallelism is one of the more difficult grammar rules, but it's certainly an important one.


Parallel structure in a sentence means that all the units of the sentence are in grammatical balance.

Yeah. That makes sense.

In the easiest of terms, parallelism means that all aspects of the sentence follow the same structure in order to give a rhythm and flow to the sentence.

One of the easiest places to find parallelism, or lack thereof, is in a sentence that contains a series of verbs. The verbs should all be structured the same way.

For example, if you are saying that people ate, talked and laughed at the dinner, you have to make sure that all of those verbs carry the same past-tense structure. It would not work to say "The people ate, talked and were laughing at the dinner." To say "were laughing" veers away from the structure of the rest of the verbs.

Get it?

Here's a real-life example in an AP article titled "600,000 tourists expected for royal wedding," which was run in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

LONDON - New flags went up, cleaning crews scrubbed down, police checked for explosives and a handful of die-hard fans were already camping out. Welcome to Westminster Abbey, the ceremonial focus of Britain's royal wedding frenzy.

The sentence starts out well enough. There is consistent past tense with went, scrubbed and checked. But then we get a different construction with were already camping.

If the sentence followed perfect grammatical parallelism, it would read such:

New flags went up, cleaning crews scrubbed down, police checked for explosives and a handful of die-hard fans camped out.

Parallelism is difficult, but makes good writing even better by providing consistency and rhythm throughout the sentence.


Satter, Raphael G. "600,000 tourists expected for royal wedding." Associated Press via Star Tribune. http://www.startribune.com/world/120749819.html. 26 April 2011.

If I had a nickel for every time someone said that... (Cliché)

Ah, clichés. The crutches of language.

Such lovely little phrases as "All in day's work" or "Missed the boat" are often thrown into everyday speech as an easy way of making a point by referring to an already familiar expression.

Unfortunately, clichés don't add a lot of value to what they're describing. They're unoriginal and, for the most part, overused to the point of being stale. Good writers know to avoid clichés, but every once in a while a cliché manages to sneak its way into journalism.

In his recent Huffington Post article "The Galleon Trial and the Future of Hedge Funds," Robert Amsterdam uses one of the most common clichés in the book:

"From the investors' standpoint, I am told that there is already an increasing culture of due diligence, and in counterparty selection as well, which can only be a positive development. At the risk of beating a dead horse, the fact of the matter is that if anyone had asked more questions of Bernie Madoff, a lot of this could have been avoided."

 Beating a dead horse? Really? How many times have we all heard that one? Amsterdam's point would have been made much stronger with a different word choice. How about saying: "I don't like to keep reiterating the same point, but..."

Now, I hate to sound like a broken record, but it warrants repeating: Clichés are as overused as the day is long and can only be justified being used in journalistic writing once in a blue moon!

(See what I did there?)

Amsterdam, Robert. "The Galleon Trial and the Future of Hedge Funds." The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-amsterdam/the-galleon-trial-and-the_b_853930.html. 26 April 2011.

Watch your words! (Wild card: spelling error)

Think back to your grade school years. How many spelling tests did you have? If your school was like mine, you likely had weekly spelling tests for the duration of at least one grade.


Early on, we're taught the importance of spelling correctly. The fact that, throughout the entirety of our academic careers, spelling is something that teachers have consistently taken points off for emphasizes this importance.

Consequently, it seems like a no-brainer that spelling would be something that journalists would be hyper aware of in their writing. Unfortunately, that's not always the case, as Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson proves in his article "BP Blowout Birthday: 'This Absolutely Could Happen Again Tomorrow.'"

Prior to the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration talked tough about reforming the corrupt and scientifically bankrupt management of offshore drilling in America — but did tragically little to tranform the Interior Department's arm-in-arm relationship with Big Oil.

Tranform? I'm pretty sure that's not a word. I'm going to assume that Dickinson meant transform, not tranform.

Dickinson also threw a lovely misspelled gem into his blog post "420, Meet Earth Day: The Secret Carbon Toll of Indoor Bud."

Lighting up all that indoor bud takes a massive amount of electiricty. Indoor marijuana cultivation accounts for 2 percent of U.S. household energy use, according to a new report by an energy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. 

Come on, Dickinson! Two different stories, both with spelling errors?! For shame.

With spell check so easily accessible, there's really no reason for spelling mistakes to slip through the cracks and make their way into otherwise good writing. So watch your words! One little mishap can hurt your credibility as a quality writer.



Dickinson, Tim. "BP Blowout Birthday: 'This Absolutely Could Happen Again Tomorrow." Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/bp-blowout-birthday-this-absolutely-could-happen-again-tomorrow-20110420. 20 April 2011.

Dickinson, Tim. "420, Meet Earth Day: The Secret Carbon Toll of Indoor Bud." Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/420-meet-earth-day-the-secret-carbon-toll-of-indoor-bud-20110422. 22 April 2011.

Because, obviously, everyone is exactly the same (Stereotypical reference)

Stereotypes. They come into play on a daily basis, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. For the most part, though, people are aware of the fact that stereotypes can't be used to generalize about groups. Most of the time, people strive to avoid stereotyping.

While stereotypes are generally frowned upon, there is one place in which they are ALWAYS unacceptable. In journalism, writers are expected to give a fair and accurate portrayal of their subjects, and stereotypes do not promote that expectation.

In his article "The Crying Shame" of John Boehner, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi ignores the no stereotyping rule and makes a pretty big generalization about the area from which Boehner comes:

Boehner is also an innovator in the loathsome new political phenomenon of men crying in public, co-owning mastery of the habit with screeching media dillweed Glenn Beck. But beyond all of that, Boehner just represents a certain type of hollowly driven, two-faced personality unique to the Beltway.

This is not an appropriate comment to make. First, two-faced personalities can be found anywhere. They are not restricted to a certain region. Secondly, the way Taibbi words the sentence, there is the implication that everyone from the Beltway has the same personality.

People are not the same, even when they come from the same place. Stereotyping or generalizing people should always be avoided in journalistic writing.


Taibbi, Matt. "The Crying Shame of John Boehner." Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner-20110105?page=3. 5 January 2011. 

Can we agree to agree? (Lack of agreement)

It's good for people to be able to agree on things. Life goes much more smoothly when agreements are reached easily and without conflict. It's a fact, though, that nobody agrees 100% of the time.

But there are some cases where agreement is an absolute must. Grammar is one such case.

A key rule of grammar usage is that of subject-verb agreement: A verb must agree with the intended number of its subject.

This means that a plural subject must have a plural verb, and a singular subject must have a singular verb. This can sometimes be difficult, especially when the actual subject of the sentence isn't easily found or its number is uncertain. But even when those road blocks come along, a good writer will still keep trucking to get past it and have a grammatically flawless sentence.

In a Rolling Stone article titled "The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians," Mark Boal did not quite get past the agreement obstacle:

It was the night of January 27th and the platoon was driving along the highway near their forward operating base. Suddenly, through their thermal imaging, they spotted a human heat signature on the side of the road – a potentially suspicious sign, since the Taliban often operate at night, using the cover of darkness to plant IEDs.

Hm. We appear to have a little bit of an issue in agreement here. Platoon is first considered singular and the singular verb "was" is used to describe its action of driving. Within the same sentence, though, Boal switches to a plural construction, referring to the base as "their" base. He then continues using plural terms in the next sentence.

The sentences should have been written the following way:

"It was the night of January 27th and the platoon was driving along the highway near its forward operating base. Suddenly, through thermal imaging, a human heat signature was spotted on the side of the road – a potentially suspicious sign, since the Taliban often operate at night, using the cover of darkness to plant IEDs."

The second sentence could also be worded: "Suddenly, through thermal imaging, the platoon members spotted a human heat signature on the side of the road..."

Simple mistake, easy to fix.

We may sometimes have to agree to disagree in our interactions with people, but when it comes to the rules of grammar, can we please agree to agree?


Boal, Mark. "The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians." Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327. 27 March 2011.