Readers of the Yahoo! front page won’t be surprised to see that editors neglected a little punctuation, as they are wont to do:
The verb wont means “to make accustom to”; as an adjective, it means “accustomed, used, or likely.” It’s the contraction won’t that means “will not.”
The editors at Yahoo! Shine missed an apostrophe, as they are wont to do:
What headline won’t they screw up?
Are you as confused as I am about this headline on Yahoo! News’ “Who Knew”?
Does this mean that the Kennedys have risen again and that Kennedys are back in Congress? Or that the Kennedys have risen and a Kennedy is back in Congress? The only thing I’m sure of is that the writer has no idea how to use an apostrophe, how to form the plural of a name, and that the U.S. legislative body is Congress, with a big C.
Well, actually, it is a contraction: It’s is a contraction of it is or it has. It’s quite different from its, which is a possessive pronoun. Except on Yahoo! News, where it’s a stand-in for the correct word:
For some, it’s not a contraction, it’s a possessive pronoun. For others, it’s a non sequitur.
For still others, it’s the typical mistakes that pepper Yahoo! Shine every day.
Grammatically challenged writers confuse its and it’s, and most often use it’s (a contraction for it is or it has) when they should be using its (a possessive pronoun). But Yahoo! writers are, if nothing else, creative in their misuse of English. But few professional writers would write two sentences in such a similar, yet completely wrong, structure to imply that “for some, it’s not Christmas; for others, it’s oysters on the half shell.” Which is true, now that I think about it.
(What the writer really meant: For some, it’s not Christmas until they have a glass of eggnog by a twinkling tree. For others, it’s not Christmas until they dig into oysters on the half shell.)
‘Tis the season for missing apostrophes and typos on Yahoo! Shopping:
The word ’tis is actually a contraction for it is and requires an apostrophe to indicate a missing letter.
It’s started. Normally we don’t see the use of the contraction ’tis (a shortened form of it is), until December. But here it is on Yahoo! Shine, missing its apostrophe:
We can expect more of that in the next couple of months. Another thing we can expect to see more of: Random capital letters that creep into photo captions on Shine:
Of course, no blog post about Yahoo! Shine would be complete without a groan-inducing typo:
But those are minor mishaps! Besides, the primary audience for Shine is women. They don’t appreciate the correct use of the language.
There’s a missing mark on the Yahoo! front page:
Maybe it’s suffering a mysterious cyber attack that transforms contractions into possessive pronouns. That could happen.
Looking for a list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to spelling? Well, here’s one don’t from the Yahoo! front page:
That’s just one of the many don’ts you’ll see on yahoo.com.
Here are some simple lessons we can all learn (or be reminded of) from the gaffes on Yahoo! TV‘s “Daytime in No Time.”
A misspelling and misplaced commas: A spell-check would have identified the misspelled liaison. It appears on many lists of the Top 100 Misspelled Words. In the U.S. a comma goes before the closing quotation mark:
A misplaced apostrophe: If a plural noun doesn’t end in S (like men, women, children), form the possessive by adding an apostrophe and an S (in that order):
A missing apostrophe: Let’s take a look at the contraction let’s. It’s short for let us. It’s the only common contraction that consists of a verb and a pronoun with a missing letter. But it needs an apostrophe:
Misplaced correlative conjunction: The pair either… or is a correlative conjunction that joins like words, phrases, or clauses. The collection of words on each side of or should be the same part of speech: If there’s a verb before the or, there should be a verb after it. If there’s a clause before it, there should be a clause after it:
This could be corrected by either this rewording:
they either had too much free time or just love to dance
or this rewording:
either they have too much free time or they just love to dance
