By Kevin S. Giles
I was a young reporter beginning my first full-time newspaper job when a snarling copy editor informed me one night, “You can’t even write the Queen’s English.”
He wasn’t wrong. Let me explain.
This frank assessment of my writing skills took place overseas at a metro paper in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I was 21 years old. The newsroom at the Courier-Mail felt foreign to me in many respects as I struggled to learn colloquialisms and the stiff manner of England-influenced news writing.