Thanks again for your good suggestions. Personally, I am a believer in a solid style book, whether it is the Associated Press style book or Strunk and White, which also helps you think about what you are pecking away at. Individual writers should take responsibility for what they do. That includes the mundane: spelling, grammar and so forth. If individual writers can't take care of that, who is supposed to? The issue once came up at a Spanish language newspaper in Mexico. A reporter there was a repeat offender involving diactrical marks such as accent marks and so forth, which are common in Spanish. His editor finally told him he would be fired if he did not include the necessary diacritical marks in his copy. The next story he filed contained an extra, separate page, larded with hundreds of diacritical marks. I never did learn whether he was fired.
Thanks again for your good suggestions. Personally, I am a believer in a solid style book, whether it is the Associated Press style book or Strunk and White, which also helps you think about what you are pecking away at. Individual writers should take responsibility for what they do. That includes the mundane: spelling, grammar and so forth. If individual writers can't take care of that, who is supposed to? The issue once came up at a Spanish language newspaper in Mexico. A reporter there was a repeat offender involving diactrical marks such as accent marks and so forth, which are common in Spanish. His editor finally told him he would be fired if he did not include the necessary diacritical marks in his copy. The next story he filed contained an extra, separate page, larded with hundreds of diacritical marks. I never did learn whether he was fired.
I did hear it from a co-worker who witnessed it. I have known a number of reporters who behaved in a similar fashion right here in the US of A.