Somebody call PETA!

Thanks to the Food Network for this one.

Order on the court

My university is hosting the Big Sky men's basketball tournament, so everyone in Greeley is very excited. The local paper, together with our campus paper, even put out a special section. One of the ads in the section caught my attention. The ad, for our on-campus bookstore, includes the following sentence:

Check out our website on Wednesday, March 9 to preorder your championship gear!

This ad looks like a jinx waiting to bite. But more importantly to those interested in writing, "preorder" is not a word. There is no way to "preorder" something, even a championship T-shirt. Even the spell checker, which is the dumbest thing I've ever encountered, knows it's not a word.

The prefix "pre" means "before." So wouldn't "preordering" mean that you bought the T-shirt before the team had won the championship? How would that be possible? You could order something in advance, but in advance of what? What does the "pre" in "preorder" actually refer to? Does it mean you get to order your stuff before everyone else, or before it goes onsale? I don't know how that would work.

Usually, the prefix "pre" is used before a noun to form an adjective. For instance, a preseason game is one that occurs before the season starts and a pregame ritual is something a player does before a game begins. The use of "pre" with the verb "order" makes for an awkward word that doesn't make sense.

Good luck Bears!

Were they that scared?

I've got everyone in the office looking for errors. Sheri, our administrative assistant, found this one in The (Greeley) Tribune.

University of Northern Colorado women's basketball team runs away from Sacramento State University

The Bears did not run away from their opponents. They ran away with the win. A better headline would have read "University of Northern Colorado women's basketball team runs away with win over Sacramento State University."

I'm not being mean; I mean it

One of my colleagues at the University of Northern Colorado brought this error to my attention. We've both found it popping up on student papers recently. Here's the problem:

Jane Smith is a journalism professor. Meaning she teaches journalism at a university.

That's not two sentences. It's a sentence and a sentence fragment. "Meaning that..." is not a full sentence because it cannot stand on its own. This means that it should be connected to the first sentence. Did you see how I avoided the error in that last sentence?

The proper sentence would look like this:

Jane Smith is a journalism professor, which means she teaches journalism at a university.

Notice that I didn't say "... meaning that she teaches journalism ...." I just don't like the sound of that. Also, notice that I used four dots instead of three at the end of the sentence that began this paragraph. Three dots (an ellipses) indicates a pause. Four dots (or an ellipses with a period) indicates a pause followed by the end of a sentence. Paying attention to little things like this makes your writing that much better. And that means a lot.

You just can't make this stuff up

What a headline!

Your verb needs corrected

The following sentence, taken from a paper which shall remain nameless, is just wrong. W-R-O-N-G:

Reilly said Moreno outlined four things that needed corrected before the petition could be approved.

It should be "needed to be corrected" or "needed correcting." I just hate that mistake. It's made far too often in spoken and written English these days. Please try to avoid it.

Read my students' blogs

I'm teaching a class called "Blogging for Journalists" over winter break. It's only four weeks, but I think that's enough time to start a blog and get the idea of how to post.

The students' blogs are interesting. We've got lots of cool topics, from banned books to basketball. Check out the links on the right of this page.

One thing I'm trying to emphasize in this course is that blogging is about more than opinions. It's about research and facts and good, clear writing. Some of the students have a lot of journalism classes under their belts, and it show. Others are a little raw. I think they're all enjoying it. It'll be fun to see how the blogs progress in the next three weeks.