I was sitting in a nearby Arby's restaurant for lunch today, and there was a copy of the Lethbridge Herald sitting on the table. As I was eating, I read a few articles and I eventually got to the editorial section, which in this high-class publication is affectionately titled "Opinions". The editor wrote an article, Graffiti is clearly not art in this city, about the new local bylaw being enacted to reduce vandalism in the city, commonly known as the Lethbridge Graffiti Bylaw. I have no qualms with the intended content of the article. The unnamed editor had some good points to share, and the thought progression seemed to flow quite naturally. The problem is in the manner in which those thoughts were put into words. I will pull a few lines here to demonstrate my point.
The article opens with:
Make no mistake, graffiti — at least in Lethbridge — is vandalism, plain and simple. And for those who don’t subscribe to that theory, we’ve got minimum $10,000 fines and up to six months in jail that say otherwise.The second sentence certainly relies enough on the first that it is not strong enough to break the rule of not starting sentences with "And". Furthermore, who is the "we" that has these fines and jail terms for non-subscribers? That sounds a little too much like pushy newspaper marketing for my likes. Moving on:
Seem a bit harsh? Perhaps. But the reality is council needed to take a strong stand and back cleanup efforts with more than rhetoric — the time had come for a dramatic deterrent.Is "Seem a bit harsh" a sentence on it's own? No! Does what seem a bit harsh? Neither should the following sentence begin with "But". A comma, when used correctly, is a wonderful tool to help convey a clear message. I'm not even going to start on the incorrect use of the hyphen in this example. I could be here all day!
One doesn’t have to look far from home, regardless what part of the city you reside, to view the growing scourge on our neighbourhoods.I wonder what part of the city I reside. Also, shouldn't it be "You don't have to look far..." if you're going to continue with the second person narrative in the second half of the sentence?
Then there’s also the highly questionable fines of between $500 and $2,000 for those possessing graffiti-making materials.Is it just me, or does the phrase "Then there's also" seem a little redundant? Using either "then" or "also" would've been plenty sufficient. And correct me if I'm wrong, but "there's" should refer to the existence of a single thing, whereas "fines" is plural. (Wow, a sentence can begin with "And" if it's independent enough from the preceding sentence.)
Finally, the conclusion:
Hopefully the message the new bylaw sends will be heard loudly and clearly enough to have to the desired effect of curtailing or eradicating the problem — otherwise, we could be looking a whole new kind of mess.I shudder at this hyphen, but there is something far worse here. Reading this article, I'm already "looking [at] a whole new kind of mess."
It's not the fact that there was an error in the newspaper that bothers me. Rather, it's the fact that there were so many glaringly obvious errors in such a short article, that was written by an editor, that really gets my blood boiling. Here is someone whose profession it is to write and oversee the writing in a supposedly professional publication. I know I may be overreacting here, but it occurs to me that if I performed my job with such haphazard disregard, I wouldn't make it a week before being fired, and likely banned from any further employment in the field.
Kudos to the Lethbridge Herald; you've really outdone yourselves this time!
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