Peggy Lowe
Local newspapers, such as the regional business journals and the OC Register, deserve to die a quick painless death. Why? Their editorial page is absolutely rubbish, the stories that might have been halfway interesting are reduced to tabloid quality crap, and there writers’ need to re-learn how to right English.
Case in point is this article in the OC Register by Peggy Lowe about a jobless, homeless, former high-roller who is reduced to living on $5-a-day meals and airlines points for free hotel stays. The topic itself is quite touching, a true human interest story.
But, the resulting article is quite the mess. In fact, it is so bad that even Microsoft Word could have fixed several of the errors…
Jim Kennedy pushes open the roll-up door of his storage unit and there, like a curtain rising on a stage, sits the pieces of his former life.
Sits the pieces? Might as well have been sits the peaces. Like a curtain rising on a stage? Does that allude to the roll-up door or the “pieces”?
Stacked over there are boxes marked…
Yeah, right over there. I can see them too.
…get his mail at the Mailboxes Plus in Irvine – he has a post office box because he has no address
Mailboxes Plus does not have post office boxes. Those belong in the post office.
His life is up in the air.
But…
Even though his life is on hold…
So, which is it? Or, did he just press the pause button falling out of the air into the hold? Also, the dude’s already said: “I’m on hold.” So, why repeat it?
…getting the made-up EDD check…
Made up? EDD? What? What?
MS Word caught this:
…after getting kicked out by a couple sheriff’s deputies
Besides the obvious error, Kicked out? Evicted. Evicted is the word, please. This guy was has enough airline miles to live a year in hotels. He gets evicted, not kicked out.
And, the author isn’t a novice either.
