Multimedia: #BehindTheDesk


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When I was first offered the position to be incoming multimedia director this summer, it felt like a USC dream was finally coming true. Over the past three years, I would watch my friends run off to the Daily Trojan newsroom after class to work on their respective articles and catch up with friends. It […]

Are you fired up for some fast fire’d pizza?


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For a company whose mantra is all about being fast and efficient with pizza cooked in 180 seconds, the same speed obviously translated to Blaze Pizza’s slogan, “Fast Fire’d.” They moved so quickly that they didn’t even realize the extra apostrophe that snuck into the slogan. In fact, Fire’d is not a word in the […]

Remembering to RAVEN on


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The American actor effected a change in his affect to affect his chances of getting a role as a British character. He affected a British accent and a flat affect, which had the positive effect of getting him the part. Confused? It’s okay — you’re not alone. “Affect” versus “effect” is one of those rules […]

A day in the life: Tackling issues behind the desk


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For those of you who’ve been around as long as I have, Sunday’s announcement that former head coach Steve Sarkisian was asked to take an indefinite leave of absence from his role at the helm of Trojan Football was probably unanticipated. But for upperclassmen, it was eerily familiar to a situation that occurred just two […]

News: The crisis of coverage


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When I was asked to be the news assignments editor for the Daily Trojan this semester, I admittedly did not know what to expect. When I had been a news writer, my main responsibility was to go an event once a week, and write about it. I just had to make sure I was at […]

Reflecting on the engrossing effects of the em-dash


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What happens in your mind when you read this sentence — and you hit the dash? Did you pause? If so, how long did you pause for? I imagine it was longer that you normally would for spaces between words, and about as long as you would for a semicolon, colon or a parentheses. This […]

Dreaming of universal parallel structure awareness


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I have a dream that all humanity will one day learn to use parallel structure properly. The only problem is that I’m currently stuck in a classroom, listening to my Chinese history professor ramble about Ying-Yang hexagrams, am writing about parallel structure and haven’t taken notes as I really should be. Unfortunately, these relatable student […]

How blogging helped me find my voice


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When I tell people that I want to go into a career in journalism one of the many different pessimistic or sarcastic reactions I often get is, “So do you want to start a blog or something?” Well, kind of, yes. The first time I wrote for a blog was when I studied in Madrid […]

The biggest problem with money and the English language


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Many common grammatical errors bother me. “Your” vs. “you’re,” “their,” “there” and “they’re” and flat-out incorrect words and expressions like “supposively” and “play it by year.” None of these errors, however, bother me more than the misuse and abuse of the poor dollar sign. In English, the only accepted way to write an amount of […]