Let’s ban this headline on Yahoo! Shine. Are they grammatically wrong? Or should Yahoo! just hire an editor who can point out the failure to match a pronoun (the plural they) with its antecedent (the singular ad).
That’s gotta be embarrassing. Even more embarrassing than this little paragraph:
I presume the writer couldn’t decide if the market campaigns were degrading. That’s why she used the word questionably, which is an adverb that modifies degrading. The other goof is simply a missing word; a mistake I’d overlook if it were the only one in the article.
If I were to confront the writer about this article, she’d probably deny any wrongdoing:
When a writer can use the wrong idiom and the wrong word in the wrong idiom, ya just gotta admire her creativity. If you’re towing the line, you’re dragging a rope. If you ”toe the line” you follow the rules. I think she meant “blurring the line.” But the article wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining if she had written that. Finally, there’s the whole question of the Kardashian the writer is alluding to. Is it Kim? Is it Khloe? Is it misplaced punctuation. Probably the latter (or ladder as the writer would say):
An article from Piper Weiss wouldn’t be complete without a mismatch between a subject (which is plural) and its verb (which isn’t):
While we’re thinking about banning stuff, can we ban this writer? She can’t be good for the language.
