Must Be The Holiday Crew

Clearly all the good writers had New Year's Eve Day off at one local paper. See the front page headline above? Allow me to rip it apart...

1) To say you delivered an unborn child is grossly redundant. You wouldn't deliver a child already born, would you?

2) When you write for print or television -- or on the web for that matter -- you strive to write in an active voice. This is taught in journalism 101. "Delivered" should be "delivers".

3) Finally, you should avoid personification whenever possible; that is, avoid having an inanimate object do something a person would do. Hospitals don't deliver babies... doctors do. In this case, the headline says the surgery delivered the baby, which is really bad.

I don't profess to write perfectly in this blog; however, this is a blog and not a newspaper, and I'm not getting paid. My thanks to my wife for pointing the headline out.