CLARIFICATIONS- Open season on coyotes, over-quoting, and 'lays'

• The April 23 cover story, "Invasion of the doggie snatchers? Uptick in area coyote sightings has residents nervous" reported that no license or permits are required to hunt coyotes, considered a nuisance species. That's if it's on your own property, says the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' Steve Ferguson. If, however, you're out hunting deer on property other than your own and run across a coyote, you'd better have that hunting license before shooting  the coyote. For more information on the various license exemptions and requirements, check out the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries website.

• Overzealous use of quotation marks during the editing process sent mixed signals recently in two stories. In "Free Angela Davis... from questions about the past, the quotation marks really weren't needed around the word "racism," as the phenomenon clearly exists. Ditto for the marks around the word "renovation" in the story about the Omni hotel in last week's cover package, as there's no question that the Omni has been renovated.

• Speaking of that April 30 cover package, several readers were aghast at our faulty grammar in alleging that the Landmark hotel shell "lays" dormant. We slipped up when using a transitive verb instead of the more appropriate intransitive verb "lies."

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