Ledes: Understand What You Are Writing!

This lede surprised the heck out of me:

A senior citizen was arrested and charged with grand theft and adoption fraud after faking a pregnancy for the purpose of receiving benefits from the Hope Agency.

Uh, where did you get that the person was a senior citizen? I don't see that in the information you were provided. Additionally, if you did think that, wouldn't you question it because senior citizens can't get pregnant?

I suspect you may have mistaken the woman's apartment number -- 74 -- with her age. Make sure you understand what you are writing before you start writing.

I can't decide if that should get the award for the biggest goof of the day. This next lede is certainly a contender:

A woman was arrested today for grand theft and defrauding an abortion agency by faking her pregnancy.

Oy, vey. I know you meant adoption. But that's not what you wrote. Please, proof-read your work because spell check won't catch you using the wrong word, as long as the wrong word is spelled correctly.

There were two such cases of that. In another instance, someone wrote "lighting" when they meant to write "lightning." Again, spell check is a supplement to but not a substitute for reviewing the story yourself, line by line.

If this happened to be a normally-graded exercise, all three of these examples would have qualified as fatals and an automatic grade of 1.0 out of 4.0. So let's be careful out there.

In the same vein, make sure what you write can be understood clearly by others. This one leaves a bit of room for interpretation:

After receiving $12,000 to pay for medical expenses and signing adoption papers for a made-up pregnancy, police arrested Cynthia Lowrie for grand theft and defrauding of the agency.

Readers can probably figure this out on their own, but let's look at what you wrote in a literal way: did Cythnia do all that before she was arrested? Or did the police do all that before arresting Cynthia? You would have been better off to eliminate any chance of misunderstanding like this:

After Cynthia Lowrie received $12,000 to pay for medical expenses and signed adoption papers for a made-up pregnancy, police arrested her for grand theft and defrauding of the agency.

(There's something else to consider here: in your lede, you shifted between tenses. At one point you were going with -ing, and at another you shifted to -ed. Try to maintain the same tense throughout.)

This next lede also leaves some room for confusion:

Mayor Datolli announced today that she will introduce a new ordinance to the city council to decrease the amount of panhandling at their annual Tuesday meeting.

Again, let's read this literally. You are saying that they are trying to decrease the panhandling that happens at their meetings. Obviously not what you meant to say. Better word order would have helped make that point clear, like this:

Mayor Datolli announced today that she will introduce a new ordinance to the city council at their annual Tuesday meeting to decrease the amount of panhandling.

Neither lede is the most confusing lede ever. Not even close. Still, our job as journalists is to be precise. Leave no room for mistaken interpretation.

FYI, technically there's a fatal there, too: you had no information that meetings were annual, which by definition means once a year. Again, be careful with word use.

Finally, make sure you identify the latest highlight and outcome in your lede. This one did not do that:

Erik Barsh suffered brain and nerve injuries and the loss of a friend after they were hit by lightning at a swimming pool when lifeguards failed to evaluate swimmers.

The latest event wasn't that they were hit by lightning. That happened a year ago. The reason it's news now is because Barsh is now suing. This lede may have worked if it was a delayed lede, followed by this:

Now, Barsh wants the city to pay for that.

Or something like that. Either way, just be sure that what you're pegging your story on is what makes it news. And what usually makes it news is whatever is new.