I am constantly surprised to see some of the stories that my fellow journalism students turn in, both for school and for publication in the the campus newspaper. Many of them are riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, or are overflowing with word fluff — that indirect way of writing that uses unnecessary words to up the word count. Many students don’t try to fix this until professors promise to dock 5 points for every error or unnecessary word.

Photo Credit: Eli_Reusch, Flickr.

I’ve heard students say that docking so many points (usually assignments are only worth 20) is too harsh, or that the “little” errors shouldn’t matter so much, or that it’s obvious what they were trying to say or the equivalent of “That’s what copy editors are for.” None of which is true.

Your story’s grammar matters.  Every error you make undermines your credibility — which is a fancy and polite way of saying that you look stupid and you make the paper look stupid. Readers will let you know it, too; I’ve gotten plenty of angry letters to the editor that say just that. “Are you stupid? I can’t believe you have the gall to call yourself a journalism student. You shouldn’t even be in college if you write a sentence like ‘The mothers asks from information.’ I’m appalled that my tax dollars are paying for your education, which is clearly a waste.”

Is this harsh? Maybe, but it isn’t just coming from exasperated professors and enraged copy editors. This is coming from readers in the general public, and they certainly have a point. Grammar mistakes — especially ones so basic as subject-verb agreement and the difference between “from” and “for” — make you look like an uneducated and careless writer, someone who isn’t particularly motivated by his or her job. You become someone who isn’t even striving for bland acceptability, much less excellence.

Such errors are easy enough to explain: it’s possible that the extra “s” was a simple typo, easy to do when you’re typing quickly, and that the “from” was really a misspelled “for” (or “fro”) that was automatically corrected by your word processing program. But that doesn’t matter, as far as readers and editors are concerned.  Either you are uneducated and unable to catch such mistakes — in which case you need to seriously re-evaluate your career choice or spend some time with a tutor — or you are lazy and didn’t do even a cursory re-read before you submitted the piece. Neither option is a good representation of you or your skills. This isn’t high school, where a C is average and a D means diploma.

True, everyone is human, and everyone makes mistakes, but they should be rare. The number of mistakes in a submitted piece directly reflect the amount of time and care you took when you wrote the piece in the first place…and the amount of time and care you took to edit it after writing it.

Your story’s word fluff matters too. Fluffy writing is boring writing. We all know it when we see it…and college students, especially, are extremely talented at using “fluffy” writing to extend a four-page paper to a required five pages.In journalism, length should always be trimmed as much as possible.

“The utilization of Lamaze, or other controlled-breathing techniques, may ameliorate the stress, anxiety and internal mental pressure that often occurs when one is in the process of beginning to give birth to an infant for the first time.”

Be honest. Gauge the fluffiness of your writing. Ask yourself: “Would I fall asleep reading this?” Many students admit, once they review their work more critically, that no, they wouldn’t want to read this. If you wouldn’t want to read it, no one else will want to either. Especially when you could have written:

“Breathing techniques, such as Lamaze, may help relieve the stress and pain that comes with labor.”

Finitely shorter — 16 words compared to 39 — and infinitely more interesting. Even if readers aren’t interested in Lamaze — hey, the sentence was over quickly, and they can move on.

Every error you make, every passive, verbose, “fluffy” sentence that you write, is one more thing for a copy editor to fix. A good editor can cut the word count of a story by 15 to 20 percent. If an editor is cutting more than that, it’s because you aren’t writing well. The more a copy editor has to fix, the more metaphorical balls he or she has to juggle, the more likely he or she is to miss something. I have no problem finding and fixing three errors in a well-written article or column. I have a serious problem having to rewrite every passive sentence, cut word fluff, fact check, grammar check, and move paragraphs around to achieve a more appropriate flow. There are more likely to be errors remaining undetected in the latter than the former.

Readers (and editors, and professors) judge you when you use bad grammar. They all judge when your submitted piece looks like you churned it out in 20 minutes without a cursory re-read, or when, to all appearances, you are elevating the word count with fluff instead of adding content.

I will address more specific grammar errors, and why certain kinds are hard to catch, regularly on Wednesdays, as well as the occasional tip on how to eliminate word fluff and make your writing more interesting. Until then, if you just start doing 10 minutes of editing before submitting work, I will be content.

[I would like to thank Mr. Peterson, my high school freshman honors English teacher, who's clever alliteration, "D means diploma!" inspired so many of us to strive for excellence.]