Just move it to the left

There’s nothing wrong with this caption on Yahoo! Shine that moving the apostrophe to the left wouldn’t fix:

The apostrophe should be used to show the omission of digits (in this case, 19), and not to form the plural of a decade: ’60s is correct.

Something’s afoot and it’s not good

It’s not the worst typo a writer can make, but it’s an easy one to spot if you’re writing about Ray Halbritter:

Maybe the writer needs some assistance in the proofreading department:

And editor who knows that either is singular and it’s is the contraction for it has would certainly help:

But something is afoot at Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally”: There’s no proofreader or editor at hand.

Your mother would be so proud

So, you finally landed a job writing for a big, hot-shot Internet company. Your mother must be so proud to see what you’re producing for Yahoo! Shine! Unless, of course, she’s like my mother. In that case she’d be appalled to see that you don’t know compliment from complement and that you think pharaoh is a proper noun:

She’d be mortified to think that you put an apostrophe in the plural Kardashians:

She’d be ashamed to realize that you didn’t bother to research Wilson Phillips and Chynna Phillips — just so you got the spelling right:

If your mother is like mine, she’d be grateful that you have a job — and that this article doesn’t have a byline.

Would that be the 1920s?

Keeping up with the times and spotting fashion trends? That’s not exactly what the editors at Yahoo! Shine are doing right now. They’re nearly a century late with advice on how to dress for work in the 1920s:

That’s pretty much the dumbest use of an apostrophe that I’ve ever seen. The apostrophe indicates the omission of a letter (or two) or a digit (or two). In this case, I’m guessing the only thing missing here is the writer’s knowledge of punctuation.

How many principals are there?

As far as I know, schools have only one principal. If that’s true, why did the writer for Yahoo! Shine imply that a school in Virginia has more than one principal?

I guess if there are two principals, and they sit in the principals’ office, one of them must be the principal principal.

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:

Not a Mensa member?

You don’t have to be brilliant to know that some writers for Yahoo! Shine aren’t exactly geniuses — at least when it comes to trivial parts of their job, like being able to spell and write with accuracy.

Kaiser Permanente is apparently too difficult for this writer to spell — or even just Google:

She seems to think that the word the is part of a family name (it shouldn’t be capitalized) and that only one person in the family has a lawyer (the apostrophe should be after the S):

Ah! There’s that apostrophe again. This time it’s not there to show possession but to create a plural. Which, of course, is wrong:

The Nikolayevs live in California, so it’s a little odd that their son would be moved to a hospital 3,000 miles away in Stamford, Connecticut. You’d think he’d be taken to Stanford Hospital, which is about 2,950 miles closer to home. But a writer who thinks that Child Protectice Services is a real agency, probably thinks Stamford is in California.

So, she’s obviously convinced you can form the plural of a name with an apostrophe and an S, and she has no idea that when you’re referring to Mom, it gets a capital letter (although if she meant “the mom,” it doesn’t).

And smack-dab in the middle of the article is a link, that the writer gets wrong on two counts: a missing hyphen in 5-year-old and the miscapitalized Mensa — an organization for high-IQ folks. I don’t think this writer is a member.

Moves mimics stars?

Did you read this on yahoo.com?

Did you notice that the writer tried to tell us that some teen’s moves are like some NBA stars — not like NBA stars’ moves, but like the actual athletes themselves? And did you notice that the writer didn’t know that moves is plural and mimics, the verb, isn’t?

Jonathan Winters’ passing

A writer for Yahoo! TV tries to honor the late Jonathan Winters with an article that says more about the writer than the comedian.

It appears that the writer is new to the English language. I don’t think Jonathan Winters ever appeared in a showroom (or show room, as the American Heritage Dictionary prefers) unless he was selling cars:

Readers may want to overlook this comment about Mr. Winters, lest they lose their mind as a result of the writer’s ignorance of common English words:

With news of Winters’ passing, writers are rushing to honor the comedian. Unfortunately, some of them are publishing their pearls before proofreading them:

How did you get that title?

How does someone get the job title of senior editor for Yahoo! Shine? Do you need to know anything about popular culture? Nope. In fact, you can screw up the title of the popular TV series “Downton Abbey”:

You can even screw up facts like the year that “Dangerous Liaisons” was released (it was 1988) and the year Madonna performed at the MTV Awards (it was 1990):

You can misspell Daniela Denby-Ashe’s name:

and drop the hyphen from Catherine Zeta-Jones:

You can even insert an apostrophe in Kaiulani and move the hyphen in Jenna-Louise Coleman’s name:

Forgot the comma in “Murder, She Wrote”? No problem!

Even if you get three out of three titles wrong (“The House of Elliott,” “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna,” and “Downton Abbey” would be correct), you can still call yourself a senior editor: