The Finland

When you're feeling a little down, there's nothing like an email from a friend to cheer you up. Especially when that email contains this:


Still, the Finland has much to recommend it, and West Virginia appears to have zeroed in on some of the best, said Di Carlo. As for the rest of the United States, however, he is not so sure.


I don't even know what this was trying to say. To be fair, "the Finland" is just too much for my brain, and I'm pretty sure I can't get through the sentence without giggling. So maybe it makes some kind of sense and the laughing just drowns it out. 


I hope CNN never gets editors.

My new mantra

Words to live by:

The story of Beyonce the giant metal chicken can be found at The Bloggess' website.

This headline is not okay with me

Mather marshals Braves past Angels in 12th

Fun with pronouns!

It's our pals at NBC again! Here's a teaser for a news story tonight:

He's accused of killing her son and mother in a crash. But the suspect just wheeled himself away from the hospital.

I have no idea what this is talking about. Who is "her"? Perhaps that's the point of the teaser: to make no sense so we'll have to watch to figure out what the hell they're talking about.

A world without commas

Here's a valuable piece of advice. If you listen to nothing else I say, remember this one.

When it comes to commas, the rule is when in doubt, leave it out. If I'm bitching about the lack of commas and you respond with, "Well, I wasn't sure, so I didn't put one in," I will likely squeal in girlish delight, and all will be forgiven.

This rule does not apply to professional journalists. You're getting paid to write. Do your job.

No reporter bias

Just to show I have no reporter bias, here's an article written by someone I had not previously belittled. That is about to change.


Demonstrations are still going strong in Wisconsin. Hundreds of protesters rallied Monday afternoon in the Village of Mount Horeb.


At this point I'm thinking it's going to be a good article. This guy has successfully put a sentence together. Impressive.

The codependency of commas and conjunctions

Okay, so you know how you always use a comma and a conjunction to join two complete sentences? That doesn't mean that you use a comma every single time you come across one of the conjunction words. When they are not being used to join two separate sentences, they do not require commas. They are free to roam the world on their own without always having to follow that stupid comma around.

Just so we're on the same page, let's do a couple of practice sentences. Ready?

Another brilliant day at our local NBC affiliate

Here in Wisconsin we have some awesome shit going down. Our governor is nuts, our state government is basically at a standstill, and our journalists are really terrible! Okay, I shouldn't be so hard on journalists. It's really only NBC that sucks, and likely this is more because of the lack of an editor than anything else. But that's not going to stop me from tearing apart horribly written articles!


Governor Walker's budget proposal means big cuts for public schools. Under his proposal, state aid for schools would by cut by almost 9%; that's nearly $900 million. The news has left many school districts around the state reeling.

Oh, fact-checking

Here's one from today's editing adventures:


I spent a couple of years at Harper’s Bizarre in New York, so I was in the fashion and beauty industry for a while.


To be fair, the fashion industry is pretty bizarre.

I'll chalk it up to a bad day

Check out this headline:


3 Egypt ex-ministers oredered arrested. 

This was on CNN's front page before the fold. I can't type "oredered" without it being underlined in red, and it's automatically corrected in any Microsoft program. So if you're working for CNN, perhaps this is one you should catch before it goes to print. I'm just saying.

Here's some advice:

First rule of writing: always run spellcheck.

Second rule of writing: if you screw something up, someone will notice. My spies are everywhere.

Thanks to the spy who pointed this one out to me!

Awesome news reporting

This is an example of an actual article printed on our local NBC news website. You would think journalists would be able to write at least remotely well, given the fact that they're journalists, but NBC does a nice job of proving that wrong. Some of their journalists have absolutely no grasp on the English language, let alone how to write well. Here's the article (with my notes).


Protestors Speak Out Against Gov. Walker's Proposal
We're off to a great start with a word misspelled in the title.

Is not doing something news?

I read a headline this morning that said:

No one is hurt after a vacant house explodes in Kenosha

Really? You might as well have said:

No one cares that a vacant house exploded in Kenosha