Beating and kicking a man in the downtown area can hurt

A Fargo woman was arrested on a felony aggravated assault charge early Tuesday morning after allegedly beating and kicking a man in the downtown area.

My first reaction when I read this brief today - before it got into the paper - was: "OUCHIE!"

Maybe a better way of writing this paragraph would have been:

A Fargo woman was arrested in downtown Fargo early Tuesday morning on a felony aggravated assault charge after allegedly beating and kicking a man.

Now that we've got that out of the way, lets get to some of the style mistakes that recently crossed copy editors' desks.

Example one:
Raw copy, wrong--"In addition to cakes, Julin also bakes"
It should be--"In addition to cakes, Julin bakes"
In addition and also are redundant, so we don't need also.

Example two:
Raw copy, wrong--"two multi-million dollar options"
It should be--"two multimillion-dollar options"
AP Stylebook says: multi- The rules in prefixes apply, but in general, no hyphen. Some examples: multicolored, multilateral, multimillion and multimillionaire.

Example three:
Raw copy, wrong--"the Moorhead School Board chair"
It should be--"the Moorhead School Board chairman" if it's a man and "chairwoman" if it's a woman.
I don't know about you, but I would prefer not to be called a chair. There is an exception. For some reason, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party officially refers to some of its top officers as "state party chair," "state party associate chair" and "state party finance chair." So don't use chair unless it is an organization's formal title for an office.
Another AP style point on chairman/chairwoman: Do not use chairperson unless it is an organization's formal title for an office.

Example four:
Raw copy, wrong--"prospect of a Moorhead counter offer"
It should be--"prospect of a Moorhead counteroffer.
I don't think Moorhead planned to offer the other side a counter.

That's it for now.