My Words, Their Bad Editing

Here is the original copy of the email I had sent to both the Press-Republican and the Lake Champlain Weekly:

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Dear Editor:

Go green. That’s the big fad now. If the City of Plattsburgh wants to go green, it should eliminate the unwanted brown, i.e., dog*hit left behind by rude dog-owners. Take a look at Trinity Park since the snow melted: canine carpet-bombing.

Luke T. Bush

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The Lake Champlain Weekly changed dog*hit to dog**it. OK, no problem there. It still gets the point across. Good editing.

But apparently dog*hit or even dog**it is too much for the Press-Republican. So they totally omitted the word, inserted “that” instead, and my letter was printed this way:

“…it should eliminate the unwanted brown, i.e., that left behind by rude dog-owners.”

Bad editing. Bad grammar. Not mine.