Geez, this must be harder than I realize. I guess not everyone appreciates the difference between a contraction like they’re (hint: it contains an apostrophe) and a possessive pronoun like their. Those wild and wacky folks at Yahoo! TV are still confused about the whole they’re/their thing:
In a “Fashion Week dispatch” on Yahoo! Shine, the writer makes so many flagrant errors that perhaps she should be dispatched to a class for English-language learners.
Perhaps with the help of a professional, the writer would learn the difference between a contraction like it’s and a possessive pronoun like its. She might also learn that every pronoun has an antecedent — the word the pronoun refers to:
The pronoun must agree in number with its antecedent. So, maybe she wouldn’t use the pronouns their and them to refer a single dress.
A brief lesson in compound adjectives might help her understand that body-conscious and made-up each require a hyphen. A tutorial on proofreading might help avoid the insult of misspelling Herve Leger’s name.
The challenges of punctuation and spelling may be difficult to overcome, especially for a writer who doesn’t use any punctuation to set off a title, can’t seem to get the whole their/there thing right, stumbles on murmured (unless she really meant murdered), adds extraneous punctuation and perhaps drops a word or two:
Typos like this are generally easy for the conscientious writer to spot:
And this should be a no-brainer:
And a lesson on how to use a dictionary would help her avoid a split-up of shakeup:
Do you think that education offers hope for this writer?
Sometimes, typos can trip up readers and discourage them from reading further. Sometimes the typos appear on Yahoo! Shine. That’s the case with a blog post about a murder in the U.K. Tripping as I went along, I read the entire blog post so you don’t have to.
The first time I tripped was on the first sentence:
If you’re writing an age, give it either two hyphens (26-year-old) or no hyphens (26 years old). But one hyphen? Sorry, but it makes no sense. Also not making sense: the a mother.
I also tripped over this sentence:
It wasn’t just the incorrect to (which I presume should be that), it was the use of the pronoun him. I thought it referred to the prosecutor. So, I wondered, how did the murder victim tell the prosecutor anything? Was he a ghost whisperer or did the victim have a premonition and fill him in on the state of the relationship before her demise? Oh, no. Now I get it: The victim made it clear to her boyfriend that their relationship was over.
I nearly tied myself in knots looking for a noun after this possessive:
It took a few readings, but I finally figured it out: My confusion was due to that extraneous apostrophe. Trippy.
Learn from your mistakes; better still, learn from the mistakes of others. This writer on Yahoo! Shine has problems with the word they when it starts a sentence:
And she has a bigger problem with commonly confused pronouns, like their and they’re:
She also has difficulty with your and you’re, frequently using one when the other is called for. The lesson for us all: Once you identify the words you confuse, misspell, or misuse, pay special attention to them in the future. And learn from your mistakes.
There they go making their mistake on Yahoo! Shine:
There they go again, mistaking there for their:
This time it’s a Yahoo! Sports blog that makes the substitution.
Apparently Jessica Alba had trouble getting something from some unnamed folks, according Yahoo! omg!:
The writers over there are getting their words mixed up.
What do I like about contractions? They’re so cute! At least when they’re used in the appropriate context. What do I hate about contractions? Some writers, like the one who wrote this Yahoo! Shine teaser, don’t understand when to use them:
No one should be forced to publish blog posts on the Web before they’re ready. Premature publication leads to embarrassing mistakes, like this one from Yahoo! omg!:
Yahoo! TV writers’ errors are of their own making:
