Was Princess Diana carrying assault rifles?

Just what kind of arms was Princess Di bearing? Assault rifles? Shotguns? Water pistols?

It’s hard to see what she could be carrying while she was baring her arms. Perhaps the writer for Yahoo! Shine will tell us.

Kim Kardashian’s empty head

We’ve all suspected it, and now Yahoo! Shine confirms it: Kim Kardashian has no brain.

Bear in mind that we have no documented proof, like an MRI, but I know we can trust Shine for accuracy.

Stick to writing about nail polish

This is what happens when you let the “senior fashion and beauty editor” for Yahoo! Shine write about movies: You can grammatical gaffes and movie mistakes.

It starts with the very first photo caption in an article about films at the Sundance Film Festival.  There’s the misspelled Elizabeth Olsen, who plays a character who made a pact to lose her virginity:

If you have any idea what a “former valedictorian reporter” is, please let me know. And if you’re certain that the character had only one parent, then you’re probably certain that the placement of this apostrophe is correct:

This gal is writing about a movie and she can’t even get the title right; it’s “Don Jon’s Addiction.” You might want to steer clear of her in the future — at least until someone schools her in common English idioms.

So, this is where the formatting for the photo captions get a little wonky and appear twice, giving us two times as many mistakes to point at and laugh — mistakes like using “aside from” and “also” in this sentence:

“Aside from” means “except for,” not “in addition to.” Aside from that and the undercapitalzed Vincent D’Onofrio, the sentence is okie-dokie.

And aside from the missing hyphen in hard-partying and the misspelled Shailene Woodley, this sentence is OK, too:

There’s no mistaking this grotesque spelling of Daniel Radcliffe:

And finally, the senior editor, who is more experienced writing about nail polish than motion pictures, gives us this bit o’ nonsense:

I’m thinking she means “since her mom died in child birth” (or maybe “during child birth”), unless the mother died during her own birth, which would make for a very short movie. Anyhoo, the woman died and some character played by Jessica Biel uncovered her. Or uncovered herself.

Uncovering a striking resemblance

Sometimes I can’t bear the mistakes on Yahoo! This homophonic horror from Yahoo! Screen bears a striking resemblance to quite a few other embarrassments from the Internet giant:

Helen Hunt: Carrying her own breasts

In the movie “The Sessions,” Helen Hunt carries her own breasts in her role as a sexual surrogate:

I have no idea why Thelma Adams of Yahoo! Movies felt that was significant enough to mention in bold letters. Frankly I think millions of women do that every day.l

Slicing and boning a sycophant

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:

Uncovering the brunt

Parents are uncovering the brunt, or main burden, of some sort of backlash:

That’s all I read of that article on Yahoo! Shine. I couldn’t bear to read any more.

Naked brains or nothing on her mind

If you’ve got nothing on your mind, is it bare? That’s the take-away from this excerpt by Yahoo! Shine‘s senior features editor, a writing genius who still can’t spell sleazy:

Bear in mind, she probably published this article without the benefit of a real editor, so it’s no wonder that her work suffers. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy:

How to embarrass your employer

There are many ways to embarrass your employer; one of the most public is to do it on the Web on the company blog. If you write for your company’s blog you represent not only yourself, but also your employer. Mistakes you make reflect not only on you, but also on your company. However, not all corporate bloggers take the job seriously enough to avoid embarrassment for themselves and their company.

The blogger for Yodel Anecdotal, the Yahoo! company blog, seems to be oblivious to that truth. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage weren’t top of mind for the writer.  She uses common idioms incorrectly (like “on top of mind”). She doesn’t know that baring means “exposing or uncovering,” but bearing down means “to advance in a threatening manner.” And her mastery of the correct use of capital letters is a bit wobbly. East Coast, when referring to a region of the United States, is a proper noun. Web, depending on whom you ask, is either a common or a proper noun, but not both.

I guess she changed her mind about capitalizing web. But she still insists on that insulting lower-case treatment of East Coast. And look-ups could use a little hyphenation:

I’m throwing this in the pile of garbage errors, because if I don’t, some snarky reader will call me out on it:

Here’s one I’ve never encountered: Spelling out a year — 2012:

More problems with capitalization: It should be Hurricane Irene, Northeast (when referring to the U.S. region) and maybe Web (but who knows). Then there’s the issue of “question” number 2, which isn’t a question:

It probably doesn’t matter to readers if she spells break-up with or without a hyphen; but they’ll definitely notice that she spells it both ways. They’ll also notice the missing show in “the talk show host” and may notice you decided that web is a common noun again:

These errors aren’t unusual on the Yahoo! blog. So, what does that say about the company?

Fewer errors would be better

Fewer errors in an article from Yahoo! Shine would make it more credible. One error? Using less instead of fewer:

(Use fewer for things that can be counted, like diapers and grammatical errors.)

A bit of redundancy begs the question: How many times were the denim diapers launched? It looks like they’ve been launched, relaunched, and relaunched again. That’s at least three by my count:

Diapers baring anything don’t seem all that effective. Those bearing madras (which is a common noun) might keep baby drier:

A close-up look at this caption reveals a missing hyphen:

and a missing S in what should be a plural:

I’m not sure why the writer had to tell us they were plaid prints when plaids would have sufficed, but I’m sure there’s an apostrophe missing from what should be boys’: