Are you kidding!?

Was the writer for Yahoo! Movies having a good laugh when writing about a movie that’s “to risque”? Personally, I think that’s too funny, as are the misspelling of Flintstones and the use of a comma where a semicolon belongs:

If you’re a phonetic speller, you might think this is how to spell Judy Blume. Oh, there’s that semicolon! Of course, it doesn’t belong here:

OK, so now I know the writer has a sense of humor. Maybe she meant court marshal? Or court jester, because this is kinda funny:

Ha-ha! No, it’s not the same “Jurassic Park” we knew and loved, it’s some crazed misspelling:

That’s when I stopped reading

I couldn’t make it past this first paragraph of an article on Yahoo! Shine:

That’s looks good? No, that’s doesn’t. And neither does too and fro.

To stink or not to stink

In a remarkable display of homophonic ignorance, the writer on the Yahoo! front page confuses to with too, not once but two times:

A week ago the same gross error appeared on yahoo.com.

Too stupid or not too stupid?

Some mistakes are just so bad that I get a little carried away and refer to them as “stupid.” This is not one of those mistakes; this is two of those mistakes:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone use too when they should use to. So, it’s a total mystery to me how a professional writer or editor would make that mistake twice. Not only that, the video referred to is “To Ink or Not To Ink.” How stupid do you have to be to fail to copy the title of a video? Thanks to the Yahoo! front page for two too stupid mistakes.

Rein her in!

There’s this article on Yahoo! Shine and it has lots and lots of errors. No surprise there. But I just couldn’t bring myself to write about all of them, so I’ve chosen my favorite sentence:

If this writer starts acting too butch, you rein her in.  OK, I’m kidding about the “butch” part; if she starts acting like she’s a competent writer, please disabuse her of the notion.

Something doesn’t feel right

Dear Yahoo! Shine writer,

Just dropping by to say that publishing this article was way too quick. You should have proofread it to avoid embarrassing yourself with gaffes like this:

You must be a writer whose brand of writing doesn’t distinguish between homonyms. But when I read your articles, something just doesn’t feel right:

Maybe it’s the missing punctuation. For goodness’ sake, can’t you learn to include an apostrophe once in a while?

Thank you for listening.

Laura

‘It’s rude not to proofread’

I’m reading a fabulously entertaining book, “The Great Typo Hunt,” which I’ve been asked to review by its publisher. (More about the book and its authors in future posts. And full disclosure: I was given the book free, gratis, no charge in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.) So, anyhoo, I was struck by this statement from one of the book’s authors: It’s rude not to proofread.

It seemed particularly apt as I read an article on Yahoo! Shine about Michelle Obama, which included extensive quotes by the first lady. I was initially struck by some careless oversights, like the missing hyphens in pink-and-white and the capitalized the:

No biggie, I thought. But then a typo in a quotation from Mrs. Obama had me wondering how the writer managed to miss this:

I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure Mrs. Obama is being misquoted:

This is just sloppy: If you can remember to capitalize White House once, can’t you remember to do it twice?

No, I doesn’t happen overnight. I doesn’t happen at all. OK, so it’s just another typo, but in a quotation from Mrs. Obama? That’s just disrespectful to the first lady:

I’m pretty sure that Mrs. Obama said “raising two more” and that the writer made yet another typo:

Clueless. I’m totally clueless as to what this should be:

Maybe they’re just typos. Maybe the writer was in a hurry. Maybe. Maybe. But, it’s rude to your readers, it’s rude to the person you’re misquoting not to proofread.

Itching to buy a dictionary

Someone should be itching to buy the fashion editor for Yahoo! Shine a dictionary:

And then maybe treat her to a tutoring session with a proofreader and an editor so that she’ll learn to avoid using too many words and the wrong homophone:

To many people, this is one too many

This is just one too many errors on Yahoo! Movies:

Too bad, too sad

Ah, it’s too bad that the Yahoo! Shine writer’s mastery of English ended at around third grade.

I know that readers of Terribly Write aren’t the only ones who think the writer should return to school to learn a little basic grammar: