Was Jude Law engaged to a man?

There’s something fishy here. Either Sienna Miller is a cross-dressing man, or the writer of this bit from Yahoo! Shine has mistaken the male fiancé for the female fiancée.

Shocking end to Jason’s engagement to a man

In a shocking end to “The Bachelor,” Jason dumps a man, presumably in favor of a woman. At least that’s what I get from this featured item on the Yahoo! front page:

Anyone who has studied French in high school knows that fiancé refers to a male. It takes an additional E to turn an engaged person into a female:  fiancée.

Insecurities cause gender identity crisis

I wonder if the writer’s insecurities about spelling caused him or her to add an extra E to fiancé in this photo caption from Yahoo! omg!:

A fiancé is a male; add an E and the word indicates a female.

The news is not good

A blog post about celebrity breakups on Yahoo! Shine had me breaking up over the misspelling of “Access Hollywood”:

At first I thought it was “Abscess Hollywood.” But I was wrong. Not as wrong as the writer who used it’s when its is called for.

As I continued on, I was startled to read about Jennifer Love Hewitt, who I always assumed was heterosexual. I’m not sure who bought the wedding dress mentioned below: Was it Ms. Hewitt or the woman she was engaged to?

If the writer had used the male equivalent of one who is engaged (that’s fiancé), I wouldn’t be asking that question.

News of misspellings is always kind of sad — almost as sad as a mismatched subject and verb:

The word news is a plural noun, but it takes a singular verb. Think: The news is good. And not: The news are good. Or in the case of this blog entry: The news is not good.

Spider-Man, fiancées, and principles

It’s the principle of the thing. The principal reason for errors on the Web? It could be carelessness. Lack of editorial support. Indifference to literate communication. Maybe it’s just a reflection of management’s lack of commitment to its readers.

Take this article from Yahoo! Movies about possible additions to the Spider-Man franchise and its missing and misused words:

Later there’s a verbal problem: The past tense of lead isn’t lead, but led:

I don’t know much about the Mary Jane character, but if she has an ex-fiancée named John, then I’m guessing things were a bit complicated in their relationship. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

She might consider the next time she gets engaged that she become the fiancée and the gentleman become the fiancé.

Is ‘Gary Unmarried’ promoting gay marriage?

A single letter can change an engaged heterosexual female into a lesbian. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Yahoo! Shine did it by adding an E to fiancé in this summary of a TV show premiering this fall:

That additional E changes the gender of the engaged from male to female. No surgery or hormones were involved.