What food do you get from a 3D foot printer?

NASA has awarded a grant to a company to produce a 3D food printer. Or at least that’s what I think this article from Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow” claims. I’m a bit unsure because the writer seems to be having trouble with English. He thinks algae is a proper noun, doesn’t know the plural of leaf (hint: it’s leaves), and uses the pronoun who to refer to a company:

So, after reading that one sentence with three errors, I’m a little skeptical of anything this guy writes.  Which brings me to the issue of a certain 3D foot printer, mentioned here:

and again here:

Is that the same as the food printer? Just what kind of food would a 3D foot printer produce? Filet of sole? Corn?

Written by a so-called professional?

Even so-called professional writers make grammatical, punctuation, and spelling mistakes — especially if they work for Yahoo!. Take this example from Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow,” where the writer believes that quotation marks belong after the expression “so-called”:

They don’t. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “Quotation marks are not used to set off descriptions that follow expressions such as so-called and self-styled, which themselves relieve the writer of responsibility for the attribution: his so-called foolproof method (not ‘foolproof method’).“

That’s a common mistake. On Yahoo!, there are a lot of common mistakes, like failing to match a pronoun with its antecedent (the word it refers to). And failing to hyphenate modern-day when it’s used as an adjective, misspelling Flintstones, and best of all using peddles instead of pedals:

This is more akin to a careless error:

And any decent spell-checker would have flagged Minnealpolis as a misspelling:

But for Yahoo!’s so-called journalists, spell-checking is optional. Heck, it’s not just optional, it’s nonexistent.

Just to be sure we understand that Jeff Stone is a Republican state representative, the writer tells us in two slightly different ways, each containing its own errors:

If you think I’m the only person who is appalled by this professional writer’s ignorance, you’d be wrong. Here’s one comment left by a reader:

“using peddles underneath their seats”
“PEDDLES”???? Jeezuz Joe Bob. My 6-year-old can write better than this. Apparently they’re trying to solve the unemployment problem by giving illiterate idiots jobs writing “news” articles. Sheesh.

Give up the reins

If you make mistakes like those made by the author of Yahoo! Sports‘ “Puck Daddy,” you should consider letting someone take the reins and edit your work:

If you don’t know that a monarch reigns and a horse is controlled by reins, you need a little editorial support.

If you’re writing an article about Glen Gulutzan, the editor might let you know if you misspell his name:

And if that editor knows that whom is the objective case of who (and is therefore correct as the object of a preposition), hand over the reins. Just be sure that the editor knows that when a subject is joined by or, the verb (which should be is) agrees with the noun closer to it:

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.

It’s it’s, but it should be its

It’s such a common mistake, that it shouldn’t be surprising to find it on Yahoo! News:

Many openly cling to its grammatical mistakes

Writers for Yahoo! Shine know that their management is totally indifferent to quality content. Many, therefore, openly cling to bad grammar in their articles:

They happily use a word like glamor instead of the preferred spelling, glamour. And they can’t seem to match a pronoun (which should be their, not its) to its antecedent.

Ungrammatical and inaccurate?

What are the chances you’d find a grammatical and a factual error in an article on Yahoo! omg!? Very, very high. It comes as no surprise that a writer who thinks this is correct:

Would also think that Nadya Suleman is a mom of eight:

OK, so maybe she’s the mom of eight. And the mom of nine. And ten. And 14. Although she’s known as Octomom, she actually has 14 children. A fact that seemed to have escaped the notice of this writer.

They’re totally wrong

Did the editor for Yahoo! Shine actually use the pronoun they to refer to the singular antecedent implant? Yes, yes, she did:

That sinking feeling

Whenever I read something like this, I get a sinking feeling:

Is the writer for Yahoo! News‘ “Who Knew?” a product of the American public school system? Have our educational standards sunk so low that high school graduates can no longer match a verb to its subject or a pronoun to its antecedent?

Many of we readers are horrified

Many of us readers are horrified by the grammatical incompetence of the editors for Yahoo! Shine:

This looks like a case of hyper-correction: The writer chose a word (we) that just sounds more sophisticated to the grammatically challenged. The pronoun is actually the object of the preposition of and so should be us.