USA TODAY - Nov. 4

November 4, 2014

            On the front page, the story on immigration uses italics to denote television show titles, AP style is quotation marks. Again, in the George Bush story, the paper uses italics to denote the title of his book, which should also be in quotation marks. Since, it occurs three times, it may be a USA TODAY style choice.

            Widows were wide-spread on pages 2 and 3. There was a missing period in the endnote for the story on the top of page 2. On page 3 in the story about laundry ‘pods,’ I deleted the word “very” from the lead paragraph, journalists try to avoid “very.” The magazine title “Pediatrics” should have been in quotation marks instead of italics, according to AP style.

            On page 5, the story about the president, uses “today” in the lead, it should be replaced by the day of the week, according to AP style. In the small plane crash brief, I rearranged to the lead to read: “A small plane crashed on approach to the island of Grand Bahama and all nine people on board were killed, the government of the Bahamas said.” The reason for rearranging it was that what happened is more important than who said it, so that information should come first in the lead.

            The use of art on page 6 for the Berlin Wall and the George Bush jump is excellent. It really draws readers into the story and makes them more interesting to read. The entire paper would benefit from using more pictures on every page more often.