A few weeks ago, I finished my language criticism course for journalism students. In all, they submitted 83 stories, totaling 21,871 words—and 181,504 characters. They did well with grammar, and even with comma usage I only found 59 errors. Most of those had to do with the Finnish rules about when to use a comma with “and”. Most of my criticisms dealt with redundancy: repetition (60), unnecessary words (44), and wordy expressions (39). I noted 55 cases of using inappropriate words, but I found many more opportunities to praise excellent choices. To translate some examples into English, students used “needle” instead of the more obvious “tease;” critics were “niggling” rather than “picky.” I also found vivid new expressions like “attitude factory” for a school producing like-minded students, “hikikomori,” and “baking wizard” in a piece about a creative grandmother. In sum, the students showed great awareness of language. They knew their own weaknesses and worked to avoid them, and they really wanted detailed feedback on their language. Not only did they make effective choices, but they could also defend why they wrote as they did. It was nice—I mean, invigorating—to work with such language champs.