•June 28, 2023•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

I enjoy writing letters to readers.
Today, I’ll take a crack at writing a letter to our staff and share it with you.
Challenging ourselves to be better is good for the soul, whatever you pursue. In our case, when we’re better you’re the beneficiary.
With that in mind, I offer this up as an open letter to our staff as both the editor of the paper and its self-appointed spokesman for good writing.
Today’s topic: jargon.
You might recall I started my career as a police reporter, and police talk in a code that’s sometimes difficult to decipher.
Eventually, I became a decent translator of copspeak.
However, during my first week on the city staff, I made the mistake of writing about how a village was planning to install French drains.
I didn’t know what a French drain looked like or how it worked, and I didn’t bother to find out (pre-internet) before I turned in my story.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.