So few words, so many mistakes

Rarely do you see a feat like this — even on Yahoo!. With just a word or two, the writer for Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally” manages to make at least three mistakes:

Let us consider the use of the word both, which is half of the correlative conjunction pair both…and. It can only be used to join two items — not three. Then consider the use of the pronoun he, which should be him, the objective case of the pronoun. And finally, consider the location of the word for: It belongs before the word both, except that both doesn’t belong in that sentence at all. Now I’m really confused.

Either or or nor is correct

When faced with having to choose between or and nor, the writer for Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally” picked the wrong word:

The pairs neither…nor and either… or are correlative conjunctions. Don’t mix ‘em up.

Still both wrong and awkward

Recently the Yahoo! front page featured an ugly grammatical mistake, with the correlative conjunction both…and joining to unequal, nonparallel elements:

Of course Terribly Write took them to task (with almost no snark), even providing three alternatives to turn the embarrassment into a grammatically correct sentence.

Knowing that the editors on yahoo.com use Terribly Write as their de facto editor (because I think Yahoo! has no competent editors), I wasn’t surprised when they made a stab at correcting the error:

Faced with three correct alternatives, what did the editors at yahoo.com choose? None of them. Instead, they rewrote the grammatically incorrect sentence, producing a different grammatically incorrect sentence. Brilliant.

This is both wrong and awkward

It doesn’t take a grammatical wiz kid to know that this sentence on the Yahoo! front page is both wrong and awkward:

It illustrates a common error, though in a way that is so egregious we all can spot it, even if we can’t quite describe it. The problem is the correlative conjunction.

A correlative conjunction is a pair of words that joins words, phrases, and clauses that are usually parallel, that is, they’re similar in length and grammatical form. That means that it joins two nouns or two phrases or two verbs. That sort of thing. One of the most common correlative conjunctions is both…and, and that’s what the writer used. And got wrong.

One way to correct the grammatical goof — and shorten the sentence (always a good thing) — is to eliminate the word both:

… edges out New York as the top Christmas and New Year’s locale

If writer really, really wanted to include the word both (perhaps to emphasize there are two holidays), then this would be the correct form:

… edges out New York as both the top Christmas and the top New Year’s locale

It’s correct, but wordy and repetitive. Yet another alternative is shorter, more direct, and joins the two holidays with the correlative conjunction:

… edges out New York as the top locale for both Christmas and New Year’s

When does school start?

I can’t wait until the kids are back in school again. Then maybe they won’t be hacking into Yahoo! Shine, and messin’ with the photo captions:

Man, there’s no way a professional writer could jam so many mistakes in so little space, right? Any high school graduate knows that the 1990s doesn’t have an apostrophe to make it plural. Any fourth grader could spot the typo in “after he divorce.” The staff on any high school newspaper knows you don’t use both “in addition” and “not only… but also” in the same sentence. And if you must use the correlative conjunction “not only… but also,” put the gosh darn words in the right place (and while you’re at it, correct that other typo): Diana was known not only for her amazing sense of style, but also for her charity work.

School can’t start soon enough.

After the breakup

After breaking up breakup, the writer misplaces an apostrophe. The ’70s were a decade; 70′s is something that belongs to 70. But, wait! That’s not all! You can learn more about John and Yoko:

John and Yoko were known for being attached at the hip. And they were known for being their casual street style. And this Yahoo! Shine writer is known for being language-impaired.

Neither writer nor editor was correct

Neither the writer nor the editor (if there was one) was correct when choosing the verb for an article on Yahoo! Music:

When the subject of a sentence is joined by neither…nor, the verb always agrees with the noun (or pronoun) closer to it.

Either a missing word or an extra word

It’s a minor omission on the Yahoo! front page — except to those who love the symmetry of a correlative conjunction:

The correlative conjunction is either…or, two words that when used together join two elements that should be parallel; that is, they should be the same part of speech. And each part should be able to complete the sentence they’re part of. So, “a LinkedIn” should be paired with “a Last.fm.” That’s it. I’m done being all grammatical on you.

Neither the writer nor the editor wants credit

Neither the writer nor the editor wants credit for this grammatical gaffe on the Yahoo! front page-+:

In a  sentence with a compound subject joined by neither…nor, the verb must agree with the noun closer to it

Let’s learn from this

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