#187

i newspaper, August 16, 2017

(54 words) Commas are tricky and often misused, as here. One easy rule is that a comma should not usually separate a subject from its verb, in this case ‘cow’ and ‘escaped’. So it should be ‘A cow which escaped . . .’

If you decide to treat the cow as ‘it’, don’t call it ‘she’ further down.

I would use the good phrase ‘return to the fold’ in the heading instead of the story. The current heading repeats the story.

‘Lake’ and ‘sea’ are not the same.

You don’t need to say ‘Norway’ if it is in the tagline.

Most important, was the cow recaptured or did it come back of its own accord? Having found the story on a website called ‘The Local – Norway’s news in English’, this is how I would have done it:

Lonely cow
returns to the fold

A runaway cow has turned up after three months living wild. Staff at Kalnes School of Agriculture, south of Oslo, said the cow jumped into Vestvannet lake in May when it was frightened and swam to an island. It returned and went into a neighbour’s barn at the weekend, apparently seeking the company of other cows. (56 words)

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