I’ve never seen a Twitter hashtag in a lede before, at least not one used as an adjective. This article used “#yyc” to replace the perfectly usable word “Calgary” in its lede sentence. I know it’s pretty easy to figure out that “#yyc” refers to Calgary, but I’m not sure Twitter use is proficient enough to justify it. I might be annoyed if I were not a Twitter user and expected to know why we’re using an airport code preceded by a pound sign to refer to a city in news articles now.
I personally wouldn’t use any hashtag in an article without still explaining what it is first. I’m talking about this, though, because I’m pretty sure there are no style guidelines for using hashtags yet, so the rules right now are pretty arbitrary. What say you, fellow writers and editors? Would you let this fly?
Also, I love how they chose a picture of Jessica Alba and not Kelly Oxford.
Another great thing about reading is that it increases your vocabulary (“Elementary,” said he). What I like to do when I read (which could contribute to how slow I am at it) is take notes and write down cool quotes and words I don’t know so I can look them up later. For example, C.S Lewis uses a lot of Latin phrases that I can only hope were common in his day because I sure haven’t heard of them.
