It’s a losing battle with some writers

Trying to improve the writing on Yahoo! Shine must be a losing battle. How can you help a writer whose grasp of language and common clichés is so tenuous:

What can you teach a writer who is unable to put a modifier like both where it belongs (which I think is before “creating and watching”, but I’m guessing):

How do you explain to a writer that she’s used the wrong word (vs. instead of and):

And how do you encourage a writer with no ear for language or knowledge of basic grammar that punctuation is required in some sentences:

For some writers, trying to improve their writing is a losing battle.

Lobbing through the wringer

When he’s not lobbing insults at “American Idol” contestants, Simon Cowell spends his time trying to influence legislators. No, no, that can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense, but it does appear in the Yahoo! Music blog “Reality Rocks,” so there must be some truth to it:

Was there a ringer in “American Idol”? Someone who was put there by the producers to affect the outcome of the voting?

And was the ringer put through the wringer like the other contestants?

Step away from the keyboard

Some people have an ear for language and are natural writers. And others don’t and aren’t. They lack the sensitivity to the connotation of words. They may be good interviewers or have interesting or controversial opinions, which might make them valuable as writers. But they need the support of a good (and I mean a really good) editor. Sometimes the kindest thing to do is to recommend that in the absence of an editor, the writer might consider another line of work.

How do you know it’s time to step away from your keyboard? When you can’t spot egregious typos like this one in an article by a Yahoo! Shine writer:

If, in the same article, you repeat words:

And if you have no ear for common expressions and clichés and can’t choose the correct word when you try to use one:

Honey, if you have a problem with verb tense you might re-examine your career choice, especially if it’s not the first time you’ve used the present tense when the past tense is required:

I was instantly stuck on this sentence and struck by the possibility that you don’t know the difference between stuck and struck:

No excuse is possible here :

You write about the fashion industry. You work for an Internet search giant. You can find the correct spelling of Giuseppe Zanotti rather quickly. Maybe what you can’t find is a reason to bother spelling it correctly.

If you make numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes, you don’t get the editorial support your writing requires, and you can’t seem to self-edit, you should consider the possibility that you work for a company that doesn’t value quality writing and its readers’ intelligence. And you might consider that you’ve found the perfect gig.

Get in touch with your inner proofreader

Someone at Yahoo! Music needs to get in touch with his or her inner proofreader:

Someone needs a vacation

Every once in a while, even the best writers make a careless mistake.  But if the number and severity of the errors are like those in this Yahoo! Shine blog, it may be time for the writer to take a little vacation or at least step away from the keyboard for a day or two:

Usually the wee hours of a day occur in the morning, although I suppose 6 PM might be considered a wee hour of the night. The correct expression is “every once in a while.”  There’s an extra word in that sentence and an extraneous hyphen in weeklong.

Maybe the writer meant to put the indefinite article a in this sentence:

Hiking may be a trial for some people, even on a local trail:

I don’t know anything about the writer’s personal life, but it’s possible she’s suffering from new-parent stress:

That might explain this misplaced period (it belongs before the closing quotation mark) and the use of the possessive pronoun its instead of the correct contraction it’s:

She just may need to stop at a local eatery for a treat. A little sugar rush might be just what she requires.

This looks like a grammatically correct, error-free statement:

The problem? The author lists only four ideas, not five.

Whew. I think I’m the one who needs a vacation. Or maybe just a nap.

Michael Sheen takes off the heels

Did Michael Sheen actually wear heels in the movie “Frost/Nixon”? Is that what this caption from Yahoo! Movies means?

Oh, no! Now I get it. It’s just a messed-up cliché! It comes on the heels of another word misstep by the writer.

What’s worse than a cliché?

Maybe the only thing worse than a cliché is getting a cliché wrong. The writer on Yahoo! TV does that and more:

Let’s just be generous and call “Clark’s” and “memory land” typos, shall we?

Keeping tabs on the writer

The management over at Yahoo! Shine should have kept tabs on the creator of this excerpt:

This is either a simple typo or the mangled expression of a woefully ignorant writer.

Kiss your career goodbye

If you’re a professional writer, you should be familiar with English and its cliches and figures of speech. If you’re the writer of this excerpt from Yahoo! Shine, you need to work with a competent editor or you can kiss your career goodbye:

Someone is not having a good day

It’s not a good day for the writer or editor who’s responsible for the home page of Yahoo! Shine. Errors (silly and otherwise) abound today.

According to the dictionary (and literate people), there’s a letter missing here:

I wouldn’t have spotted the capital G in the middle of GaGa if the writer hadn’t spelled it later as Lady Gaga. But what’s really laughable is the cliche “breaking the bank” gone horribly wrong.

What might charitably be called typos appear here:

and here:

And a missing picture is just another sign that someone is having a bad day:

and