Top 10 News Writing Pet Peeves

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• Is he addressing professionals?

  He said, "That being said ... "

  He said "fleed". The past tense of flee is fled.

  He said, "I don't like it when us anchors say ... etc." He should have explained why: "because people will stop listening to we."

  Moral: Don't try to sell me a new suit when your shoes need polishing.

  Cable pundits are now saying something like, " ... both parties are promising lower taxes for we the people" and using air quotes to justify their bad grammar. Supposedly serious people using air quotes should have their hands cuffed behind them anyway, but that's a separate issue.

  • Funny and TRUE! Thank you, Dick.

    • "It's important to note that . . ."

• I generally agree, having rewritten hundreds of wire copy stories into more conversational English. But oddly, I found Josh's machine-gun delivery about being conversational quite un-conversational. Does he realize he used "air quotes" 8 times? Or that he used incorrect grammar (my pet peeve) saying "Us anchors" as the subject of a sentence, or referring to adjectives and nouns as "Preposterous Pronouns?" He says it's more conversational and correct to say "I spoke with" rather than "I talked to" but then recommends replacing the phrase "speaking out about..." with "talking about..." As Jason said, that's his list, and we each have ours.

  • Yes, I'm sure he felt pumped up after producing the video, but he should have had an editor review it. He tried, but in doing so, exposed himself to review by others.

• That is his personal list. You may have yours. I am tired of news people saying they enjoy "telling people's stories." No, you are reporting the news. I don't tune in to the news to get a feel-good feeling.