It’s the same, only different

They’re the kind of things I’ve come to expect on yahoo.com. The typo faces is an easy goof to spot. Finding typos on that page isn’t exactly challenging or even rewarding. But what is fun is pointing fingers at the editors’ inability to agree on anything. Anything. They can’t agree on whether first lady is a proper noun, of if work-from-home needs hyphens when it’s a compound adjective. They’ve contrived three ways to spell eurozone, and use them simultaneously.

So now the issue is how to form a possessive from a name ending in S, like Edwards. Geez, they can’t agree on that one, either!

If you follow the Associated Press guidelines, you form the possessive of a name ending in S by adding just an apostrophe. Other authorities recommend adding an apostrophe and an S. The Yahoo! style standard is … oh, wait, Yahoo! doesn’t have any standards.

Charges leveled at writer

Anyone familiar with English could level charges of assault on the language at the Yahoo! Sports writer for his use of the wrong word here:

and here:

As a verb, level has several meanings, but in this context it means “To direct emphatically or forcefully toward someone.”

You write the top, I’ll write the bottom

Imagine you’re a writer for the Yahoo! front page and you have to write the top part of its news module and a colleague writes the bottom part. That’s what I think happened here:

Would you consult the Associated Press Stylebook to see that first lady is not an official title, and shouldn’t be treated as a proper noun, even when it precedes the woman’s name? Or would you consult some other authority and hope that your colleague looks at the same source? Or would you ask your buddy if first lady should be capitalized? Or would you do what Yahoo! staffers do and just capitalize it any way you like, consistency be damned?

It doesn’t get much worse than this

I’ve seen the writers at Yahoo! mangle Bethenny Frankel’s name in some rather creative ways. She’s been Bethany and Bethanny, but this misspelling on Yahoo! Shine is the worst:

It’s not possible to agree

Is it possible for two writers or editors to work together and come up with a single way to spell a word or punctuate a compound modifier? Not if those two folks work for the Yahoo! front page:

Really? Someone (or some two) can’t spell work-from-home with hyphens twice on the same page? Really?