This was in Friday's C-L, regarding the early Thursday morning shootout in south Jackson and here's the one part that really insulted my intelligence:

No one was hit - not the cops, not the suspect, not even the woman and 5-year-old girl hiding in a bedroom.

Mr. Editor, thanks for clearing things up for me so that I can be sure that "No one was hit." I know my comprehension skills are not all that good for a guy with a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, but sometimes I needed to be better educated about things. *Sarcasm off*

Come on, C-L. Wasn't it plainly clear that "No one was hit"? What part of that statement was hard to understand without having to further explain who wasn't hit? A better way to write that is:

"A woman and a five-year old girl were hiding in a bedroom, but no one was injured during the shooting."

I can clearly understand now why people here think that your paper is such a joke, and a bad one at that.

OK, let's play Unbury the Passive, folks:

Stephanie Taylor got back together with her former boyfriend and the father of one of her children on Dec. 22 at a nightclub and before the night was over he was dead and she was charged with killing him, a Jackson police detective testified today.

Taylor, 36, is charged in the stabbing death of 32-year-old Sam Hughes Jr., whose bloody body was found in the parking lot of his apartment building at the Grove Apartments on Woodway Drive.

He had been stabbed in the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.

I count five just in that section.

(And what a whopper of a first sentence! Don't breathe while reading it; it will escape if you do.)

That first sentence also doesn't make it clear that Mr. Hughes is both Ms. Taylor's former boyfriend and her child's father. A person could read into that and think that they are two different people, thus thinking that she was a two-timer.