USA Today must hire writers who graduate at the bottom of their English classes because, whenever I read it, I find a plethora of errors. I was skimming that newspaper today and found three glaring errors that should never have made it through the first proofreading. Here’s the first of two errors in an article about yesterday’s bridge collapse near Pittsburgh. The error is highlighted.

Since “latter” is an adjective indicating something is nearer to the end than to the beginning, the word makes no sense at all in this context. A noun, such as “ladder” (a thing, an object) is needed to pull victims out of the debris. “Latter” and “ladder” were words my ESL teachers practiced with their students so the students could learn to distinguish between them. Maybe this USA Today reporter should come to one of our local ESL classes. Next, . . .

“Obtain” means to acquire; “sustain” means to undergo. Did the hospitalized people actually go to the hospital in search of injuries? You’ve got to wonder. And now last, but not least, and on a lighter note, . . .

If Minnie Mouse changed her clothes, you might expect her to “don” (put on clothing) her new outfit, but USA Today sees her change of clothing as a “dawn” (the beginning of an event or occurrence, such as sunrise).

I’m sure my childhood friends and I would have used the correct words in all three of these examples when we were in elementary school. If we hadn’t, our teachers would certainly have corrected us. We definitely wouldn’t make these mistakes as adults reporting for a national newspaper!