I don’t think it’s any of our business what the Beljans did on their “wild weekend.” But apparently the editors for yahoo.com feel that it’s front page news:
I admit that my prurient interest got the better of me, and I clicked that link to read the article. Boy, was I disappointed:
There’s just no agreement about former CIA director Petraeus and emails on the Yahoo! front page.
It looks like one editor decided that the possessive of a name ending in S requires just an apostrophe:
Oops. Presumably someone else also employed by Yahoo! decided that the possessive requires an apostrophe and an S. Also, email doesn’t require a hyphen:
Oops × 2. Yet another editor likes e-mails (with a hyphen) and a return to Petraeus’ without that additional S:
While legitimate news outlets have an established house style (or follow Associated Press style), yahoo.com editors seem to be totally unaware of the need for editorial consistency. Associated Press style says that the possessive of a name ending in S requires just an apostrophe, and that there’s no hyphen in email.
It ain’t rocket surgery. It’s as simple as making a decision and sticking with it.
Maybe the writer for Yahoo! Shine should drag herself to a dictionary:
Then maybe she’d alter that alter so that it’s altar.
It sounds like a heinous crime from “Silence of the Lambchops”: fileting a minion. Fileting (also spelled filleting) involves slicing and boning meat. When it involves a minion (or an obsequious follower or sycophant), then we’re into the realm of cannibalistic horrors.
I can’t bear to think about that; I’ll just consider that the Yahoo! Shine writer doesn’t know a minion from a mignon.
That’s probably the worst misspelling ever. So this misspelling of Philadelphia isn’t so bad:
But how did that slip past the spell-checker? Oh, yeah, Yahoo! writers don’t use a spell-checker. They also don’t understand that polar ideas are just cold ideas. Polar opposite ideas are at opposite ends of a spectrum (and not different sides of a spectrum).
Bear in mind, the writer of this article is a professional:
This is a long way from correct:
