Blog Post 1: Errors from The Fayette Citizen

During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I interned at The Fayette Citizen, the best local newspaper in my hometown. So I figured that for a blog post on editing, I'd go with my alma mater. I looked at two stories. One, "Coweta says 'no' to Starship," I decided to edit for this post. The other, "No arrests yet in PTC condo shooting," I thought you could look at and comment about.

"Coweta says 'no' to Starship"

The lede is too long; it runs on, which hurts clarity. I would end the sentence at "Gifts" and add the information about the store's location to the next sentence.

The first paragraph is too long and contains too much information. A lot of that could be moved to later grafs to help with clarity and readability.

In the second graf, if the quotation is transposed from a speech, there should not be a comma between "have seen" and "and what they have been told."

Still the second graf: The information that Rodney Brooks is the District 4 Commissioner was already in the first graf. No need to repeat it - or Brooks's first name - here.

A nit-picky quibble with the third graf: The end of the sentence is structured as a series, but it isn't, really, because the items in the series do not share the same constructions. It should read something like "...packed the commission and the foyer outside and spilled down the stairway into the first floor lobby."

The "it" in the fourth graf has an ambiguous referent. It is unclear whether "it" refers to the zoning district or to the business, which makes what the sentence is actually saying incredibly unclear.

Sixth graf: Like in the third, the first sentence is structured like a series when it really shouldn't be. It should read "...(county staff) investigated and spoke with the owners, and they believe that what they’ve been told and what they’ve seen..."

Comma errors in graf seven: Comma after "residents" and "Latham" in the first sentence, and no comma after "follow" in the last sentence.

Graf nine: "law suit" should be one word.