Out-of-Class #1: More Accuracy Advice

Get Your Eagle Eye On: 10 Tips for Proofreading Your Own Work

A guest post by Leah McClellan of Peaceful Planet

The best blog post I read this morning—of many—is good. Very good, actually. It flows. It’s fresh. It has a rhythm that drew me in and made me want to read every word. The ideas are thought-provoking.
But how much more enjoyable would it have been if I didn’t have to reread certain sections to make sure I was getting the gist of things? How much better would the post be if I didn’t hesitate at it’s instead of its and there instead of they’re? How much intended meaning and power was lost over a lack of subject-verb agreement or commas that might have been better placed?
Tripping, stumbling, and hesitating over misspelled words or ill-placed punctuation is like watching a TV show with a shaky cable signal or trying to talk while a cell phone connection is breaking up—the reader is jostled right out of the story the writer is telling.

If the errors are too big or too many, I’m outta there.

This writer intentionally broke a lot of rules in his 1100-word article, and he broke them well. Sentence fragments clustered together as ideas to ponder, a long list of items without commas that symbolizes repetitive drivel, the same word repeated over and over in a few short sentences to pound in a point. Good stuff and well done, for the most part.
Some grammar and punctuation rules can—and should—be broken, when you know what the rules are and how to break them effectively. But the lack of solid proofreading in this piece is like cake without icing, pottery without glaze, or a fine piece of wood in need of a polish. The writer didn’t step back and get his Eagle Eye on.
“Come on,” you chortle. “It’s hard to proofread your own work. And who notices anyway?”
Believe it or not, lots of people notice unless they’re just scanning. And it’s quite possible that many of those scanners might linger on every word you write if typos and bloopers and unintentionally-broken punctuation or grammar rules weren’t making them stumble and wonder and lose their focus.

Typos and errors break up the “voice” that readers are trying to hear as they read your written words.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a freelancer, a blogger, a student, or anyone who writes for any reason. Most of us don’t have proofreaders or a skilled family member or friend to help us out on a regular basis. And if you’re submitting work to an agent or publisher or a big blog for consideration, why let typos and mistakes clutter and cloud the brilliant work you want them to read?
Any time you write something, you want readers to enjoy and appreciate your masterpiece. It’s your baby, an extension of yourself. Take good care of it.

Writing and editing is art. Proofreading is science.

So says Rushang Shah, President of Gramlee.com, an online editing service with editors behind the scenes constantly proofreading and copyediting. Rushang says that “all proofreading and copyediting involves the human element, and that’s why computers cannot replace a proofreader.”
Proofreading your own work can be challenging, it’s true. You already know the story, you already have a picture in your mind of what to expect and, as a result, you tend to skim over words and groups of words. Plus, you know your own voice and, even if there are errors in your writing, you don’t “hear” them or see them because you’re in a hurry, and your mind fills in the blanks as you skim over things. You might be daydreaming—even if you’re reading out loud.
If you have a system, though, proofreading can be like doing a quality check on an assembly line. It’s just busy work, really, and not very creative at all. But it’s so important.

Here are some tips to help you get your Eagle Eye on and proofread your own work like a pro.

1. Don’t proofread until you’re completely finished with the actual writing and editing. If you make major changes while proofreading, even if it’s just within sentences, you’re still in an artistic, creative mode, not a science mode.
2. Make sure you have no distractions or potential interruptions. Shut down email and social media, hide the cell phone, shut off the TV, radio, or music, and close the door. Print your document if you need to get away from the computer altogether.
3. Forget the content or story. Analyze sentence by sentence; don’t read in your usual way. Focus on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Work backwards, if that helps, or say the words and sentences out loud. Concentrate.
4. Make several passes for different types of errors. Try checking spelling and end punctuation on one pass, grammar and internal punctuation on another, and links or format on yet another pass. Develop a system.
5. Take notes. If you notice a format issue while checking spelling or if you need to look something up, make a quick note and come back to it so you don’t lose your focus.
6. If you do make a last-minute change to a few words, be sure to check the entire sentence or even paragraph over again. Many errors are the result of changes made without adjusting other, related words.
7. Check facts, dates, quotes, tables, references, text boxes, and anything repetitive or outside of the main text separately. Focus on one element or several related aspects of your writing at a time.
8. Monitor yourself. If you find yourself drifting off and thinking about something else, go back over that section again. Try slapping your hand or tapping a foot in a rhythm as you examine each word and sentence out loud.
9. Get familiar with your frequent mistakes. Even the most expreienced writer mixes up their, they’re, and there or too, two, and to. When I’m tried or writing fast, I right what I here in my mind and just get careless. Not a big deal. That’s what proofreading is for. You caught those errors, didn’t you?
10. Check format last. Every document has format, even an email, whether it’s paragraph spacing, text wrap, indentations, spaces above and below a bullet list or between subheadings and text, and so on. Leave this for the end because contents may shift during handling.
You already know better than to rely on spell-check, so I won’t belabor the point except to say that “wear form he untied stats” doesn’t bother spell-check but it might get an American in trouble at a customs checkpoint.

What if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for while proofreading?

Do you know basic comma rules, how to use a semi-colon, or when to use who or whom? You might have an excellent sense of what things should look like or sound like, especially if you’re an avid reader, but if you don’t know basic grammar and punctuation rules, proofreading might be guesswork, at best, with doubtful results, at worst. Why not make your life easier and your writing better? Take some time to learn basic rules from some online resources I consult when I need help:

Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips
Purdue Online Writing Lab: General Writing Resources
Oxford Dictionaries: Better Writing
GrammarBook.com

You can also download a free copy of The Handy-Dandy Everybody’s Guide to Proofreading over at my blog, Peaceful Planet.

Don’t let mistakes tarnish your work of art, whether it’s a research paper, a blog post, a query letter, or business communication. And remember, proofreading is not the same as writing and editing. It’s not about creativity; it’s a science that needs a system. Follow these tips and create your own system, and you’ll have your Eagle Eye on in no time.

Leah McClellan is a freelance writer, copyeditor, proofreader, gardener, vegetarian, and animal lover who dreams of world peace and writes about communication at Peaceful Planet.

Missing: Accuracy Checklist

For those of you suffering a fatals streak, please sloooow down. Start devoting a larger share of writing time to fact-checking. I'd rather have you right short than wrong. And start using the accuracy checklist I passed out during the first few weeks of class. If you can't find it, here's the content:

One note: I know in this class we can't print things out. But we can use a sheet of paper to write out every fact, name, title and so on as we go through a digital copy of the story.

And for out-of-class stories, I would expect these checklists to be followed to the smallest detail.

ACCURACY CHECKLIST FOR JOURNALISTS

Created by the Reynolds School for Business Journalism

Distributed by the Poynter Institute for Journalism

Instructions

After completing your story, use the down arrow on your keyboard to highlight and then complete each of these checks.

I. Facts

Check these first three items while your story is on the screen:

1. Run spell-check, review suggestions and correct any actual errors.
2. Click hyperlinks.
3. Call phone numbers.

Use a printout of the story for the remaining checks:

4. Put a ruler under each line as you read the text. Underline every fact, and then double-check each one, including:

a) Names and titles of people, places and companies - Also, does each second reference (Jones) have a first reference (Mary Jones)?

b) Numbers and calculations - Do the numbers add up? Is it millions or billions? Are the percentages correct?

c) Dates and ages - Watch references to “next month/last month” when the month is changing.

d) Quotes - Are quotes accurate and properly attributed? Have you fully captured what each person meant?

e) Superlatives - What’s your source that something is the biggest, oldest, etc.?

II. Grammar

5. Check each sentence for correct use of:

a) Subject-verb agreement - Also, are you consistent in your use of either the present or the past tense to tell the story?

b) Pronoun-noun agreement.


c) Plurals and possessives.

d) Punctuation.

III. Spelling

6. Read the story backwards, checking the spelling of each word. Use a dictionary.

IV. Fairness and context

7. Terms - Define or eliminate unfamiliar terms, such as acronyms and jargon.

8. Fairness - Have all stakeholders been contacted and given a chance to talk?

9. Missing - Does the story leave any important question unanswered?

10. Context - Does the reader have the context to understand the story?

V. Your own common errors (for example, if you have a habit of getting dates wrong, misspelling names, ect.)

11. ____________________________________________

12.____________________________________________

VI. Final checks

13. Read the story aloud.

14. Have someone else read it. 

15. Accompanying elements - Run the previous checks on the story's headlines, captions, sidebars, photos, graphics, videos, interactive media and podcasts. Check for inconsistencies.

Missing: Ways To Solve Inaccuracy

This is a modified version of an editor's checklist on how to help reporters solve inaccuracy problems. I think there are some tips worth following. Let's take a look:

Problem: Not detail-oriented. Plan to ask at least five extra questions not covered in your assignment that go into greater detail; keep asking clarifying questions.

Problem: Making assumptions. Reports should back up statements in story with evidence; reporters should take their time and not rush during interviews; reporters should self-edit religiously and ask themselves if they can back up what they are writing; reporters should ask sources follow-up questions; reporters should ask the obvious questions to make sure they're not assuming; reporters should ask, "How do you know that? and "how do I know that?" of themselves and sources.

Problem: Interviewing confusion. Reporters shouldn't be shy about asking sources to slow down or repeat something; reporters ask "can you elaborate?" or say, "I don't understand"; reporters can repeat the information back to the source in their own words and give the source the opportunity to correct them; reporters can go back over direct quotes with the source; reporters can make a recording of events or interviews that can be checked.

Problem: Relying on out-of-date information. Never type something before you've checked it; always ask sources for an updated title; do research ahead of time; check Web sites for the last time they were updated and if it's been more than one year, then the information might be old; check the date on press releases.

Problem: Time constraints. Plan ahead for a long day -- start doing research the night before or get up early to get all your reporting done on time; overestimate the time everything will take; start writing what you know while waiting for that last callback, it might also help you find out earlier what you don't know; don't multitask during the editing process; keep fact-checking.

Problem: Exaggerating/using more powerful words than your reporting shows. Use precise language; use self-discipline and resist the urge to overwrite or overstate the facts; always attribute it. If you can't attribute some part of your story, then perhaps your words are wrong; reporters should use balanced reporting and make sure that it's reflected in the writing of the story; reporters should put the facts in the proper context.

Problem: Relying on unreliable sources. Reporters can ask sources for another source or documents to back up what they tell you; reporters should vet sources' credibility during interviews. Does what they're saying make sense? Always ask, "How do you know that?"

Controversial: We Had Some Fatals

Most folks did pretty well in this assignment. Some grafs were too long (some people need to hit the "return" key more often and make shorter grafs) and too many people need to remember to double-space your work so I can fit comments in the margins.

Unfortunately in this exercise, we did have some fact fatals. In fact, many fatals.

Now, before we all start hyperventilating, let's put this into context. The hardest thing for young journalists to master is fact-checking and integrating fact-checking habits into their daily routines. That's because we come into our first journalism classes thinking it's more about writing then getting it right, when really it's the other way around.

So early every semester, there's a spate of fatals. And the reason we grade fatals so harshly is to get your attention that yes, fact-checking really is that critical. It's not just lip service; we need to get things right, period.

(For the record, 10 members of this 16-student class are already card-carrying members of Omar's JRN 200 Fatals Club, with at least one fact fatal on a graded assignment to date. We'll get t-shirts made soon.)

(And you're not close to being alone: in five years of teaching JRN 200, I can count the number of fatal-free students on one hand, and I have no idea how they did it. Almost everyone fatals at least once -- and, more typically, two or three times -- in here. Including dozens of people who ended up 3.5ing and 4.0ing this class. So again, don't freak out. The semester isn't close to being over, and your grade is far from being locked into anything.) 

Through fatals, we want to be able to identify where we're weak during these practice stories, any one of which is only worth around one percent of your final grade. It likely won't have much -- if any -- long-term impact, as you'll get a chance to show improved skills in higher-weight assignments as the semester rolls on.

Still, we can learn from these mistakes. And the lesson today is, it's not the big mistake that kills us. It's the little things we overlook and take for granted, like names.  

In one case, we spelled one last name as both Adler and Sadler (the former is correct).

First, a fact-by-fact fact check after writing would have revealed the misspelling.

Second, simply reading the story and noticing an inconsistency would have also highlighted the goof. After all, your last name is spelled only one way. Discovering two spellings for one last name would automatically tell us that one has to be wrong, and a potential fatal that needs to be fixed. 

In a second case, someone did basically the same thing, alternating between the last name of Baker and Bakers (the former is correct).

In a third case, we spelled the Adler name incorrectly, as Alder. Despite an awesome alternate lede and great story structure throughout, this was more than enough to sink the story.


In a fourth case, someone wrote a story that was structured almost perfectly. I mean, the grade could have been in the high 3's. But the story missed a letter inside of a quote. We wrote game instead of games, with an s.

Now, if that error was outside of a quote and it didn't change the meaning of the story, then it's just a spelling error. But inside of quotes, we have to be exact to what the person said. So, even a simple dropped letter costs us in this case.

In a fifth case, inside of a quote we replaced the word who with that. Again, which it doesn't change the meaning, it's not what the person said, exactly.


Now, do fatals suck? Yes, they do. You automatically get a 1.0 on the assignment, no matter how well you did otherwise.

That's so we can emphasize how the root of journalism isn't writing, it's getting it right. There is no such thing as getting a "little" thing wrong, as any error mars our credibility.

Now, a bigger problem is not turning something in at all. The two things we have to do every time out in journalism is get it right and meet our deadline. And the latter I penalize more harshly, with a 0.0 grade.

Unfortunately, two of us got the 0.0 for failing to meet the deadline at all. If you didn't get a graded assignment back, that's why.

And that's much, much worse than getting a 1.0. How, you may ask?

Well, everything we do in this class is part of a 1,000-point scale. And in that scale, each assignment is weighed as part. If you get a 4.0 on an assignment, you get 100 percent of points eligible for that assignment. If you get a 3.9 it's 99 percent, a 3.8 is 98 percent, and so on.

So if you get a 1.0, you still get 70 percent of possible points. If you get a 0.1 -- which I don't think I've ever handed out -- you get 61 points. But a 0.0 is zero points. You fall much further behind the point scale than if you turn in the worst story ever written.

Is there a journalistic value reason for that? You bet. An editor can work with a piece o' crap story, no matter how bad it is. They can fix it and clean it up sufficiently as long as they have it. But they can't work with nothing. Nor can you fill up a newspaper page or a TV script with nothing.

It's your responsibility to make sure you don't forget an assignment, as it is in the real world. It's your responsibility that you're not even one second late on your deadline, as it is in the real world. And as in the real world, it's your responsibility to make sure your assignment is routed to the right place, which in this case is omars@msu.edu.

Them's the breaks, folks. It sucks, but let's at least learn from these errors so we don't repeat 'em.
 

Alt Ledes: Don't Assume!

Like in this lede:

There are many fears that go through a bride's mind before their wedding. For Sara Howard, she never thought to worry about her husband's drive to the church.

Now, it's structurally fine. But the question I have is, how do you know she never thought to worry about her husband's drive to the church?

In the information you were given, you have no indication whether she wasn't worried, or that her fiancee was a shitty driver who had her constantly terrified with his lead foot.

Here, we went beyond the information you had, and made an assumption. We were being creative based on our guessing, not the facts. And we can't do that.

Now, as a journalist you would have been correct to find out if she ever though she'd have to worry about her fiancee's driving. And if she answered yes, then this lede would be perfect.

But we need to confirm the facts first.

Controversial: We Had Some Fatals

Most folks did pretty well in this assignment. Some grafs were too long (some people need to hit the "return" key more often and make shorter grafs) and too many people need to remember to double-space your work so I can fit comments in the margins.

Unfortunately in this exercise, we did have some fact fatals. Three, to be exact.

In one, we wrote a very nice story that had a solid lede and gerat fact organization. But in the nut graf, we said that the board policy permits boys from playing on girls' teams. In fact, the policy prevents such an action.

The incorrect word -- which spell check wouldn't have caught, because it is an unintended word that happens to be spelled correctly -- changes the meaning of the sentence in question, and therefore is a fatal.

In a second case, we referred to the school district as that of Lansing. In fact, it was East Lansing. The two are not the same, and so this also changes the meaning of the story and is a fatal.

In a third case, we misspelled the name of Jane Tribitt as Tribett. Misspelling a name is a fatal.

Now, do fatals suck? Yes, they do. You automatically get a 1.0 on the assignment, no matter how well you did otherwise.

That's so we can emphasize how the root of journalism isn't writing, it's getting it right. There is no such thing as getting a "little" thing wrong, as any error mars our credibility.

The good news is, practice story assignments like this one make up just over one percent of your final grade. And that's by design, so we can build good fact-checking habits into our routines so that when we get to much higher-weight assignments like the out-of-class stories, we've identified our bad habits and worked them out of our systems with the practice stories.
 

Alt Ledes: Spell Check Is Not Perfickt

Spell check is a useful tool to use to quickly identify some spelling errors, but not all. For example, it will not alert you to when you incorrectly spell a word that creates an incorrect word that is correctly spelled. Like here:


Sara Howard will no longer be walking down the isle this morning after hearing of her fiance's fatal car accident, 15 minutes before their ceremony was to begin.

The problem here? You meant to say aisle, but you misspelled it as isle.

And that's a bigger problem than just a simple misspelling.

That's because the misspelling creates a different word. Aisle means a passageway between two seating sections. An isle is a small an island.

So, what you are saying is that Sara was no longer going to walk down a small island.

And that, unfortunately, is a fatal fact error. And a fact error is a fatal.

So let me be clear: SPELL CHECK IS A COMPLEMENT TO -- BUT NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR -- CHECKING YOUR STORY LINE-BY-LINE AND WORD-BY-WORD YOURSELF.

Please be sure to BOTH spell check AND eyeball your story before you turn it in. Each and every time. 

Alt Ledes: Use Words Correctly; Use Correct Words

Language is important in journalism because people read what we write for understanding. Using a word incorrectly or using an incorrect word can create confusion at best, and an unintended meaning and fact error at worst.

Take for example, this lede:

In an attempt to trim city expenses, local officials announced that offendants will be charged $25 for mug shot and fingerprint services.

Structurally, it's a nice lede. But what the hell is an offendant? Now, there is the word defendant, which is someone accused of something. And offender, which is someone who did something. You kinda merged those two words to invent a new word.

I appreciate your eagerness to expand the English language, but if we are to be understandable we should use word that have already been invented and are well-known, okay?

Basic Ledes: Get It Right!!!

In this exercise, you got credit simply for participating. But in all future exercises, starting today, ANY fact error will automatically drop your grade to a 1.0.

That isn't to be mean; rather, it's to emphasize the importance of accuracy, fact-checking and understanding topics in journalism. Our credibility rests on our accuracy, and if we don't develop good habits to make sure what we write is right, then we have dim prospects in this industry.

Unfortunately, on this exercise we had a few of what we call "fatals." In fact, SEVEN people would have fataled this assignment. Not unusual for newbie journalists who are still working on their fact-checking habits, but not something to ignore, either.

To-wit:

This lede: A study by sociologists at the University of Florida shows that fewer women are likely to get divorced or separated after receiving their degree.

Technically, the lede is strong. The problem is, the study found the exact opposite result, that women with higher educational levels are more likely to divorce!

In another lede, you referred to a person's last name as Sindelair in one reference, then Sinclair in the next.

If you did a proper post-write fact-check, in which you went over the basics like names and compared what you wrote against the information you were provided, then you would have surely found the error.

Additionally, if you thoroughly read what you wrote and looked for inconsistencies then you would have found that you wrote one name in two ways, and that at least one surely had to be wrong.

Three of you flubbed on the name altogether. Two spelled it as Sinclair, and another as Sendelair. Another incorrectly referred to him as a city council treasurer, when in fact he was a county treasurer.

One of those fatalees actually had a double-fatal: not only did they misspell the name, they also reported he was charged with embezzlement today. In fact, he pleaded guilty today, after being charged three months ago.


Another person incorrectly reported the treasurer resigned two weeks ago. In fact, he resigned two weeks after being originally charged three months before! Please pay attention to detail and make sure you catch little things that, if left unnoticed, can cause big errors. (See why I had the gotcha true-or-false quiz questions?)

Journalism isn't about just writing; it's about understanding what you are writing before you type a single key stroke, and double-checking what you wrote once you're finished writing.

That means in any time period you are given to write a story, you should spend the first 25 percent going over and understanding your background material; 50 percent writing the story; and 25 percent going over what you wrote. Every minute of actual writing time should have an equal amount of quality control time behind it.

Missing/Robbery: Fatalspalooza 2012

Another pair of exercises, another batch of fatals. Let's look and try to learn from mistakes:

Double-check your names! One of you referred to professor Alan Christopher as Alan Christophe, with the "r" at the end missing. Yes, that is a fatal. Yes, that sucks. Please double-check names to make sure they are correct.

Another one of you referred to the robber Robert Wiess as Weiss. That is also a fatal.


Don't trust spell check alone! One of you wrote that the story had a history of holdups. When you said story, you meant store. Since that changed a fact, that's a fatal. After all, the story had no history of holdups. The store did. And since your misspelling of store created a new but unintended word that happened to be spelled correctly, you can chalk this one up to trusting spell check too much. Please eyeball your story line-by-line before turning it in to make sure there aren't any misspellings that spell check wouldn't catch.


Look for inconsistencies in information! In one story, you spelled the robber's name as both Wiess and Weiss, in different sections. A thorough review of names after you finished writing but before you turned the story in would have revealed the dual spellings, for which you know one obviously has to be wrong.


We also had fatals on a make-up assignment that was not an exercise assigned to the class in general.

For that one, make sure you're clear on who said what! In it, a quote attributed to an agency was mistakenly attributed to an individual. In the information set you were given, the quote was listed right next to a change in speaker.

None of these fatals are over something remarkable. Each is regarding a very basic task we have to fit in, on deadline, every time.

I know we're rushed for time, but our goal as journalists is to balance two competing factors: time and accuracy. Not to give lip service to one and concentrate on the other. In doing deadline assignments, please make sure you're finding time to do double-checking. I'd rather have you write short than incorrectly.

For those of you scoring at home, as of this morning seven of 12 members of this class are members in good standing of the JRN 200 Fatals Club. I'm coming for the rest of you soon.

Practice Ledes: Fatals Suck

Unfortunately, we had a fatal on this exercise: one of you reported Police Chief Barry Kopperud spotted the carjacked SUV in a Chinese restaurant parking lot. In fact, Kopperud said police officers spotted the SUV, not Kopperud himself.

And that's a fatal. Sorry, folks, but it is.

Please, make sure in the prewriting process that you are studying your information thoroughly enough to understand the sequence of events and who said or did what, and then after writing double-check your work to make sure that what you wrote is both what you intended to write, and that it lines up with the facts perfectly.

Practice Ledes: Spell Check Is Not Perfect

While spell check is an important tool you should use each and every time you write, it is not a perfect tool. For example, it won't catch a word that you misspell that creates a new word that is correctly spelled. Like here:

Thanks to a prompt police force, a terrified mother was reunited with her six-month-old daughter 40 minutes after a convenience store robber speed away with her car, with the baby inside.

You meant sped, right? But what you wrote was speed. And spell check wasn't going to catch it because speed was correctly spelled, if not intended.

Spell check is a complement to -- but not a substitute for -- checking your story line-by-line with your own eyeballs, and even reading things aloud to see if there's some sort of easy-to-make but hard-to-spot goof like this one, that would be immediately apparent when spoken out loud.

Missing: Spell Check Won't Help You ...

... if your misspelled word creates a new word that's incorrect in use but correct in spelling.

Like when you wrote that, many kids runway from problems they are having at home.

Uh, didja mean, "run away?"

Luckily for this person, this was not a fatal since it wasn't inside a quote and it didn't change the meaning of what you said (since something that is completely non-sensical doesn't change a meaning; it just confuses the crap out of a reader).

Don't trust spell check as a sole means of proofing your work. Use spell check and review your story line-by-line to make sure you have the correct word usage and good grammar and have no inconsistencies that may tip off a fatal, and check your story fact-by-fact to make sure you don't have any errors anywhere in the use of names or titles or numbers or statistics.

Do all of that. Not just one or two of the steps. Every time. No exceptions.

Controversial: Our First Fatal

I'm sorry to say we had our first fatal on this assignment. One of you identified Hugh Baker as the school superintendent, when in fact he was the athletic director.

That is a fact error. That is a fatal.

And that's not the worst thing, at least right now. Odds are that all of you will fatal at least once. Most of you will fatal a few times.

What we are going to try to do this term is identify any patterns of fataling, so as you build your fact-checking habits, you zero in on any types of facts or writing circumstances that seem to make you more fatal-prone. Then, we can create solutions to make sure you fact-check in a way that helps target those problems.

In general, though, please make sure you aren't just spell-checking your story, and that you are also fact-checking a story. Identify people, places, things, statistics, dates and titles. Make sure all are correctly used and spelled. Check your quotes and make sure nothing is wrong.

Let's try to make fatals a rare thing this term, okay?

Controversial: Don't Assume

I decided to give you guys a break on this assignment. And the break regarded a confusing text passage. Here it was:

Sandra Adler is a parent whose daughter was a senior on last year's team along with the four boys. Adler also was an all-state consensus pick as player of the year during her senior year on the girls' field hockey team thirty years ago. Her husband is Stuard Adler, minister of the Chuch of Christ. "I just don't think it is healthy mentally or physically to have the boys and girls playing on the same team."

What's confusing here is that it's not clear who is providing the quote: Sandra or Stuard. The correct response would have been to ask your sources -- in this case, me -- for a clarification. Only a couple of you did that. The rest of you apparently guessed. Some went with Sandra; others with Stuard.

In the past I arbitrarily picked one or the other as the correct speaker and fataled whoever went the other way. I am giving you a gift here in the form of a free pass. You won't get two.

Please, make sure you fully understand what you are writing. Don't make guesses.

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.

Bicyclist -- More Spell Check Non-Catches

The spell check was cool with one of you referring to a gull bladder.

I'm pretty sure you meant gall bladder, and not the bladder of a sea-faring bird.

Again, spell check is an aid to -- but not a substitute for -- rigorously reviewing your copy. Line by line, word by word, fact by fact.

Yes, unfortunately this was a fatal. No, this wasn't the first time spell check screwed over a member of one of my JRN 200 classes regarding the exact same phrase, on this exact same assignment.

For those of you keeping score at home, we now have nine confirmed members in Omar's Fatals Club. For the other five of you, your membership application is on its way.

Missing: Did You Notice . . .

. . . the first name of Jason Abare's wife was spelled TWO different ways (Anne/Ann)?

If you did notice, what did you do, and/or what should you have done?