Date: TBA
Time: 9 a.m. to noon
Place: Campus Life Building,
Room 100, NIU-DeKalb.
MAP
Cost: $10 for attendees
from NINA member
newspapers or individual
members; $20 for
nonmembers. Pay in
advance or at the door.
To register: Contact Jim
Killam, 815-753-4239 or jkillam@niu.edu.
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Grammar headaches?
NINA to the rescue
UPDATE: The June 17 Grammar workshop at NIU has been postponed. A new date will be announced soon.
This year’s workshop presenter is Tom Johnson of the Beacon News in Aurora.
“Rather than focus on grammar as a set of rules, we'll focus on getting the words right,” he said. “The premise is that because clear language reflects clear thinking, the essentials of grammar will fall into place.”
Tom Johnson Johnson will use real-life examples of grammar problems in stories that made it past at least two journalists before they were intercepted … or not.
“Together, we'll work through language demons that subvert our newspapers,” he said. “We'll share solutions, and probably laugh quite a bit.”
Johnson has been a member of The Beacon News staff since October 1971, when he began as a part?time swing man on his off-duty hours from a U.S. Army base in Arlington Heights. He has been reporter, city editor, features editor and news editor. Johnson is a graduate of North Central College and attended one semester of grad school at the U of I in Champaign before finding a draft notice in his dorm mailbox.
This marks the third consecutive summer the grammar workshops have been offered. Reporters, copy editors, designers and others have attended. Each workshop has been led by longtime copy editors from NINA newspapers. The 2003 presenter was Barry Wood of the Rockford Register Star, who mixed short quizzes with audience questions about common grammar errors. Last year’s workshop saw Neil Holdway of the Daily Herald, who mixed quizzes and discussion with sound clips of bad grammar in popular music.
The workshop will run from 9 a.m. to noon in the NIU Campus Life Building, Room 100.
