This is practically perfect. It’s the first sentence in an article on Yahoo! Shine and it only has three mistakes! There’s only one misspelled name (it should be Farrah Fawcett), there’s only one punctuation mistake (that comma should be an em dash), and only one incorrect word:
I don’t know anyone who covets beauty icons, do you? They might envy icons or wish to emulate or copy icons — but have a desire to own a beauty icon? Not so much.
I’m not responsible for the teeny weeny type or its pale color in these excerpts. I think that it’s a way to discourage you from actually reading the article on Yahoo! Shine. I wish I had taken the hint, because what I discovered was not pretty.
I could never in four score and seven years understand omitting a comma (or two) in “red, white, and blue.” Just like I will never understand why the writer thinks twitter is a common noun. I suppose to some tween-age mind twee-ful makes sense. Maybe I don’t get it because I am old.
Sections of the flag code are numbered with real numbers, not spelled-out numbers. And “Eek!” is what a cartoon character says when she sees a mouse. Maybe the writer is trying to eke out a little attention with her creative use of the language:
Again with the dropped commas? Why?
The man’s name is William Moulton Marston, not this:
Wonder Woman carried the Lasso of Truth. I figured that out on my own. But I don’t know what the rest of the sentence is supposed to mean:
Does anyone really confuse Wonder Woman’s costume with a swimsuit? I guess the writer thinks that’s what Wonder Women wears to the beach, and she changes to her real Wonder Woman costume in a cabana. (The other not-so-pretty things in this paragraph are a relatively minor goof of a missing word and a wrong word, which I can only hope is a typo.)
This writer needs to learn something about punctuation. A hyphen is no substitute for a dash. A hyphen joins words; a dash separates them. And random commas don’t help your readers; they just frustrate them. And I really don’t know what to say about triangular fabric that has opportunity.
The rest of the article consists of photos and their captions, which for some reason are actually readable, though the literary quality is not an improvement. We really shouldn’t be subjected to an all-American error on Independence Day:
I’m pretty sure the word video is not part of the video’s title and that the writer published this article before it was ready:
And finally, a gaffe à la Yahoo!:
Look out, readers! Yahoo! Shine is coming and it has some new and creative abuses of the language. First up? It’s an arbitrary use of the Shift key:
Then, it’s on to a missing word, an undercapitalized Sea, and best of all, Ursula Andress at 76:
She looks pretty good for her age — heck, for any age!
Of course, the writer’s mistake, never before seen by my Terribly Write eyes, is that the writer thought that she should include the actress’s age today with a description of her decades ago. It’s a mistake she’ll make throughout the article. But, on to her next creative capitalization error: This time it’s neglecting to capitalize Secret Service. That’s closely followed by too many hyphens in what should be drive-by shooting:
And it’s another word gone missing!
And it’s a misspelled Jane Seymour followed by her misspelled character, Solitaire, and another arbitrarily capitalized word:
Her name is still Seymour:
Here’s one of my faves: Using a hyphen (which is a short horizontal line like this: -) instead of an em dash (which is much longer, like this: — ). But other than that, this senior editor is doing all right!
In an attempt to honor Veterans Day, a writer for Yahoo! Shine gives it a decorative flourish with an apostrophe:
When she’s not adding unnecessary punctuation marks to holidays, the writer is misquoting Dr. Jill Biden, who generally speaks in complete sentences:
Do I really need to explain what’s wrong with being home from the holidays? Or that post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t a proper noun, but it does sport a hyphen?
Oh, so now she uses a hyphen! But a hyphen is no substitute for an em dash — it just confuses me because a hyphen joins words. And it’s still not Veterans Day with an apostrophe:
In a post on Yahoo!’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal, the number of errors proves that even Yahoo! employees don’t use the company’s search technology. The mistakes are even more embarrassing for the Internet giant because the post features popular search terms and misspelled search queries made by Yahoo!’s users.
It’s pretty clear that the writer also doesn’t use a spell=checker. D’oh. It’s doughnuts with an extra doughnut hole here:
Anyone who reads Yahoo! Sports knows that NBA Finals is a proper noun. Whether web is also a proper noun is up for debate. Yahoo! staffers don’t agree on that one. But everyone agrees that Heat, the name of an NBA team, needs to be capitalized, that LeBron James requires another capital letter, and that Dwyane Wade is the correct spelling of the basketball player. Any professional writer or editor should know when to use the subjective mood and would have used “were based”:
If the writer had tried Googling “Mike Spoelstra,” he or she would have discovered that the coach’s name is Erik Spoelstra. A true professional would have used the numerals 34 for the age and would never screw up the use of dashes like this:
Holy crap! There’s no excuse for misspelling Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme. The missing hyphens in the compound adjectives gluten-free and low-cal are minor errors in a cesspool of gaffes:
What does this blog post say about the writer and Yahoo!?
In a recap of an interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann, the writer for Yahoo! Finance‘s “Tech Ticker” makes the Minnesota Republican look brilliant — by comparison.
The writer has a lot of trouble matching a verb to its subject and seems to love to capitalize words willy-nilly:
The overcapitalization continues throughout the piece. And the goofy use of a hyphen proves that it’s no substitute for an dash:
Calling the health care bill waiver a “shame” is a little weird, even for Rep. Bachmann:
What she actually called it is a “sham.” How do I know? I listened to the interview. (Oh, the sacrifices I make for Terribly Write’s readers!)
There’s a missing word here. And unless only one state has the right to opt out, the apostrophe is misplaced:
Again with the capitalization of president! A hyphen goes missing from the compound modifier government-run and part of a verb has disappeared:
I’ve thought for a long time that Rep. Bachmann was a little goofy. Apparently writing about her makes one a little goofy, too.
Once again displaying a disregard for grammar, a journalist for Yahoo! News mistakes whom for the correct word and a hyphen for a dash:
There’s no explaining how mistakes like these get passed on to the reader:
But that’s about par for the course at Yahoo! Also common is the use of the hyphen when a dash is required. At least the writer tried to include the HTML symbol for an em dash, but failed. But that’s not the worst of this mess. I’d say forgetting to complete a sentence is a high crime in journalism:
Mistakes like this can be really damaging to a news source’s reputation:
It would be damaging, that is, if anyone considered Yahoo! a reliable source of news.
Oh, lordie. Why would anyone continue reading this article from Yahoo! News when this is in the first sentence?
Undeterred by the misspelled duchess, I read the rest of the article so you don’t have to. With the number of errors it contains, you all owe me big time. I stumbled on some nonsense and a hyphen that should be an em-dash:
I groaned at a typo and the reference to “the Ferguson”:
I smirked at the missing word followed by the misspelling of Mr. Mahmood’s name:
I scratched my head at the parenthesis without its partner:
… and a quotation mark without its mate, and a then instead of than:
See? Now are you glad you didn’t read that.
I’m sorry to be the one to say this, but I must. The blog Yahoo! Profiles News is just not good. It may contain useful information, but with the number of errors it displays, who can trust it?
Here are just a few examples: The use of a hyphen instead of a dash is a relatively minor but annoying problem. But the inability to distinguish between a singular noun (like parenthesis) and its plural (parentheses) does not reflect well on the writer and his or her employer:
A simple hyphen would make right hand right, and changing your contact card to a contact card would make the sentence actually understandable:
It’s such a common mistake on Yahoo! that I’m surprised someone hasn’t told the writers there that it’s is not a possessive pronoun:
The subject of this sentence is singular, and its verbs should be, too:
And finally, I’m altogether confused by the use and placement of all together here:
Someone at Yahoo! Shine was trying to use dashes correctly — to indicate a sudden break — but misplaced one:
The second dash belongs after girls. But the first one is correct! That’s 50 percent right! Not bad if you’re satisfied with slapdash writing.
