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.

Looking more than careless

If you place a correlative conjunction in the wrong place, you look not only careless, but also grammatically challenged. It’s a lesson that’s wasted on the editor of the Yahoo! front page:

The correlative conjunction not only…but also must joint two like objects, such as two verbs or two nouns. Corrected, the sentence would be: These careers offer not only work-life balance, but also high salaries.

Sensitive subject gets insensitive treatment

If you’re writing about a sensitive subject like suicide, give it the respect it deserves, and not the shoddy treatment it gets on Yahoo! Shine.

Perhaps the transsexual who attempted suicide, Nadia Almada, prefers that her name be misspelled, keeping her somewhat out of the spotlight:

I’m pretty sure celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay would prefer his name be spelled correctly:

The misplaced comma, missing hyphen, and incorrect hyphen in bipolar are more evidence of the lack of regard for the subject:

The other mistakes in the article are the kind you can expect every day from this writer. She can’t cover up this mistake. It’s a verb. It doesn’t need a hyphen:

If your dream is to be a writer, try exercising a little respect for the English language:

Learn to proofread so your writing won’t be missing a word:

The correlative conjunction is not only…but also. And aftercare is the correct spelling here:

There’s an S missing here:

There’s another misspelling of Gordon Ramsay’s surname. Did the writer just make up a spelling for Gail Simmons? Because Googling it would be too hard? Or she doesn’t have respect for the TV personality? Another misplaced piece of punctuation and an incorrect comma separating a subject from its verb show a lack of respect for the language:

Where’s the apostrophe that would make this correct?

Misspellings, grammatical errors, and just plain sloppiness; they all show a lack of respect for the subject, the language, and the reader.

Comma-tose at Yahoo!

Someone at Yahoo! must be comma-tose. She has no idea how to use punctuation. Or even if punctuation is necessary. And that someone wrote this mess for Yahoo! Shine:

The wrong punctuation (a period instead of a question mark), the missing punctuation (like a comma or two) and the mysterious “to do it toss it” are just the start.  The article continues with a cap on melamine (it’s not a proper noun), the laughable plural one’s, and the missing also in the correlative conjunction not only…but also:

This comma should be a semicolon or a colon:

A comma is required to separate two independent causes clauses joined with and; another comma is needed after the word quick and the comma should be a semicolon:

Finally, the writer probably doesn’t know this, but a pronoun needs an antecedent — the word it refers to. If the antecedent is plural (ice cubes), the pronoun must be plural (they).

I’ve read a lot of bad writing, but I’ve never read anything by anyone who was more punctuation-challenged. Nice job!

Hot mess: The new standard for writing?

It’s just a hot mess of random punctuation, homophonic errors, missing words, and other weirdness. And this is by a professional writer for Yahoo! Shine.

It starts with some missing punctuation: A hyphen in clear-view would make sense of the two words, as would two hyphens in out-of-season. But out of site? It’s out of sight, man!

Maybe the random comma is a result of a fat-fingered error. But what’s the excuse for including not only without its partner but also?

More random punctuation: A hyphen slipped out of hand-woven, a comma popped in where something else belongs, but I have no idea what. And an apostrophe that the writer wrongly thought was necessary to form the plural of DVD drops in:

More hot messness: A missing hyphen in over-door. More random punctuation: I don’t know what the comma should be since the words following it aren’t a clause and it seems to be referring to organizers. And again with the out of site:

This isn’t a brand-new mistake; it’s actually quite common on Yahoo!:

Does Yahoo! have any standards for hiring writers? Or is the ability to produce a hot mess the standard?

Show a little respect to Christie Brinkley

As a writer, you display respect for your readers by using the language correctly. You show respect for your subject by spelling her name correctly (sorry, Christie). The writer for Yahoo! Shine may have different ideas:

Maybe it’s OK in some worlds to ignore the missing half of the correlative conjunction not only…but also. But if you strive for grammatically correct writing, you’ll include not only not only but also but also.

Wanna hear a great tip I learned from Mom? When you’re referring to your mother, show her some respect with a capital M:

You should also show some respect to the subject you’re writing about. Start by getting the spelling straight. Sorry, but Prell was introduced by Procter and Gamble.

And get your pronouns right. Like, don’t use it’s (which means it is) when you should use its. It’s only right.

Make over a headline

It’s time to make over this headline on Yahoo! Shine:

(If you mean the verb, you need two words.) Lest you think that makeover in that headline is a mere typo, here it is again in the actual article:

There’s a missing word here:

and another one gone missing here:

Our minds are crowded, but they can still identify the wrong word here:

and the pile of words that looks like a complete clause, but lacks sense and the unnecessary why:

The correlative conjunction not only…but also is nearly complete:

(I think I’m running out of red ink.) If you follow Associated Press style, you’d capitalize Internet. If you follow any style whatsoever, you’d get rid of the misspelled deadline:

I think if I had to read more of this, I’d doze off and later wake up in a nasty funk:

Not only here, but also there

The folks over at Yahoo! front page make a correlative conjunction error not only here:

but also here:

The correlative conjunction is not only… but also, and it must join two parallel elements.

This is not only embarrassing but also ugly

So, you don’t know what a correlative conjunction is? Not to worry. You can probably spot one that’s incorrectly used by the embarrassing and ugly results. Like this on the home page of Yahoo! Shine:

A correlative conjunction pair like not only…but also must link balanced or similar elements. In this case the writer should have said ”celebs who not only wear pink but also champion the pink-ribbon cause.” See how easy that was?

A new high in error-to-word ratio

In what is possibly the largest number of errors in the fewest words, Yahoo! Shine makes some truly remarkable blunders:

Fans of the correlative conjunction will recognize the missing half of the pair not only…but also. Aficionados of punctuation are probably scratching their respective heads over the use of the semicolon, which is generally used to separate two independent clauses that aren’t joined by a conjunction.

Mom and Dad are appalled that they’re treated like common folk. The typo and instead of an is easy to overlook. But the planet Earth is as important as Saturn and Uranus and deserves that capital letter. As for that double hyphen— presumably an insufficient substitute for a real em dash — it makes no sense. What would have made sense is a hyphen:  plan an Earth- and budget-friendly prom.

Your turn: What other errors did I miss?