Austin B., Michael S. win first points in extra credit contest

Austin B. and Michael S. scored the highest in Thursday's in-class exercise, becoming the first students to garner points in the contest for extra credit. Bailey had the best score in the cell phone story. Michael S. was No. 1 in the story about the mayor.

In addition to the errors I inserted into these stories, several students found other mistakes, which added to their scores, but they also inserted new ones, which subtracted points. Remember, when making changes, the goal is to "do no harm." Here were a few of the mistakes:

• In the mayor's story, some changed "ten percent" to "10%." It's "10 percent," according to Associated Press style.
• In the mayor's story, some changed "work force" to "workforce." While "workforce" is in the dictionary we use, "work force" is AP style.
• In the mayor's story, some removed capitalization from "City Council" and "City Hall." They keep their capitalization under AP style when they refer to a specific body or place.
• In the cell phone story, some changed "whom" to "who." This is a tricky rule to learn, but in this story "whom" is correct because it's tied to the object of the sentence, not the subject. Who and whom are pronouns. For a good online explanation, click here.

There also were some good catches. They included:

• Not capitalizing "obscenity" in the headline of the mayor's story.
• Raising questions about grammar in quotes in the mayor's story. While these are fixed on a case-by-case basis, a good copy editor will flag each and weigh whether to add parentheses to aid in understanding for the reader.
• Breaking up the quote, "Why talk about it? Just do it," in the mayor's story.
• Removing the word "itself" from before "election day" in the cell phone story.
• Questioning the use of contractions in both stories. AP style advises to minimize their use, except in more informal contexts and quotes.