Is there a new retirement plan that I’m unaware of? According to the Yahoo! front page, there just may be!
Or maybe it’s a mistake. The U.S. retirement plan is a 401(k) — the parentheses are part of its name, which is taken from subsection 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code.
The U.S. state is Louisiana — the two I’s are part of its name, which is taken from France’s King Louis XIV.
The mistakes are Yahoo!’s — the company that doesn’t have editors, proofreaders, or even spell-checkers.
Who woulda thunk it!? There it is, right on Yahoo! Shine: Anything that is negotiable is — wait for it — negotiable! Yes, everything negotiable is negotiable, except for school administrators:
It’s fairly obvious that the writer doesn’t know the difference between a principle (which is a basic truth, law, or assumption) and a principal (which is someone or something with the highest rank, like a school administrator). You know what else is obvious? That the writer didn’t do a spell check, because even the crappiest spell checker would find this repeated word:
(Some writers don’t know that if the words within parentheses are a complete sentence, then the ending punctuation belongs inside the parentheses, too.) Oops, here’s a misplaced period:
And here’s another homophonic horror: The possessive pronoun its instead of the contraction it’s:
It’s getting more obvious that the writer doesn’t know when to use an apostrophe, because she missed one here, too:
Pronouns are pesky little things, aren’t they? They generally have to refer to a noun, and when they don’t, they just don’t make a lot of sense:
Is it asking asking too much that a professional writer proofread her work or at least use a spell checker?
Here’s a lesson on punctuation (for when you’ve had enough parentheses):
This example of what not to do is brought to you by Yahoo! Shine.
Some people just shouldn’t try to be clever when they’re writing. You don’t need to read beyond the first paragraph of this article from Yahoo! Shine to see that the writer is one of those people. It will twist your ventricles into a vice:
I’m going to attempt a simultaneous translation of that little expression: By “ventricles” the writer means “heart.” By “vice” the writer means “smoking, gambling, or other unsavory activity.” So, the dude in question will twist your heart until you start smoking or playing the ponies. Makes sense. (The misspelling in what should be “50 Shades of Grey” is hardly worth mentioning after that.)
Those of you still reading, undeterred by that gem, will uncover a missing word here:
and (surprise!) a missing word there:
If you’re foolish enough to continue reading, you may want to chew on this for a while:
Trudging on, you’ll find a missing comma, another missing word, a missing space, and one too many periods. (Only the one before the closing parenthesis is correct):
Finally, if you’re dotty enough to read the photo caption, you’ll see that the writer can’t tell a plural from a singular noun:
I think I’ll go take an aspirin after that. My ventricles feel like they’ve been clamped in a vise and I feel a little cardiac event coming on.
If you’re a regular reader of Yahoo! Shine, you know what to expect — mistakes, and lots of them. You know that writers often drop words, especially little ones:
You know that the writers often misspell names, like Allison Benedikt. (If you can’t look at the name and reproduce on a keyboard, try copy and paste. It really is that easy.) You also expect punctuation errors. (If there is a complete sentence within parentheses and it’s not embedded in another sentence, put the period in there, too.)
In this article about the book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” the writer shortens the title to “What to Expect.” But, it should get some capital letters and quotation marks; otherwise, it just looks like a confusing mess. Another expected missing word (the expression is “weighing in on”) and a misspelling (it’s copycats):
And depending on whom you ask, who is the wrong word. (If you ask a Shine writer, they probably think it’s OK.)
One misspelled name is never enough for Shine staffers. Vicki Iodine sounds like a healer. Or a typo. Her name is Vicki Iovine.
What to expect when you’re reading Shine: Errors. And lots of them.
What do you call a writer whose works appear on one of the most popular sites on the Internet, and yet doesn’t bother to spell-check her pearls? Arrogant? Lazy? Or maybe simply an egomaniac who doesn’t believe she could make a mistake? Me? I’d call her a writer for Yahoo! Shine:
Someone who doesn’t bother to proofread her gems wouldn’t notice a missing parenthesis, a missing word, a misspelled FAO Schwarz, and the quaint amidst:
This description of a hairstyle is so confusing, I bet even the writer has no idea what she meant:
It should come as no surprise that the woman knows little about punctuation or grammar. The period belongs before the closing parenthesis (because that’s a complete sentence inside the parens). She could remove the ring more easily (an adverb is required to modify the verb remove). Is tweet a proper noun? No, it’s not. It’s now accepted as a verb:
Here’s a sighting of a homophonic error and a truly ridiculous grammatical error:
Maybe this writer is an egomaniac. Maybe she needs to ask for an editor. Maybe she just doesn’t care.
Faced with a bad 401(k) like the readers of the Yahoo! front page?
You can rescue that retirement plan with a pair of parentheses and a lowercase K — 401(k). The plan is named after subsection 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Reading this article on Yahoo! Shine had me wondering: What happens when a “mega-mansion” is struck by lightening? It gets lighter. Black turns to gray; beige turns to white; red turns to pink. It could be worse: It could be struck by lightning. That would be bad. Like, burning up the house bad.
Not really bad, but really wrong was failure to capitalize Boy Scout:
A premiere is the opening or debut of a movie or play. Premier means “first in position or rank.” Guess which word the writer should have used here:
Oh, this is relatively unimportant after those errors, but the writer placed that period in the wrong place. It belongs after the right parenthesis because it applies to the entire sentence, not just the words in the parens.
There are little mistakes and big mistakes. And then there are the mistakes made by Yahoo! Shine‘s senior features editor. They tend to be really big, stupid mistakes.
This misplaced period is one I’d classify as a little mistake. The period belongs before the closing parenthesis because the words inside the parentheses form a complete sentence:
I’m still trying to figure out what screaming fans hoard. Autographs? Photos of the royals?
Maybe the editor has been watching too many episodes of “Hoarding: Buried Alive.” Maybe she has a limited grasp of English, and can’t tell the difference between hoard and horde and eke and leak. Maybe she’s just an idiot.
She’s made up a term! Good for her! Now all she has to do is make up a consistent spelling for it:
There’s some reference to Freddie Mercury’s band, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense in this context:
If she meant the woman who wears the crown in England, then she should have written queen. It’s not a proper noun unless it directly precedes the queen’s name.
Mistakes, big and small and stupid. You’ll find them every day on Shine.
Are you a journalist looking for a job? The media reporter for Yahoo! News has found a few openings, but is he qualified for any of them? Not if the hiring organizations value little details like accuracy.
In the article, the Yahoo! staffer decides to relocate Sarasota, which is on the coast of central Florida, to the southeastern corner of the state:
He obviously has a little trouble with punctuation (omitting a comma and adding a parenthesis), proofreading (doubling a word), and spelling difficult place-names like Berkeley:
So this Yahoo! reporter may not be ready for respected journalistic organizations. But he’s doing just fine at Yahoo!, where the bar is considerably lower.
