News we can use

I always learn something when I read Yahoo! News; mostly I learn what not to do. The site serves as a great reminder of the kind of mistakes I could be making if I’m not careful, like capitalizing a random word:

Or committing a grammatical crime like failing to match a verb to its subject:

Or confusing a murder with a murderer:

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.

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:

One of these is wrong

Let’s hope that one of these words on Yahoo! News is a typo, because I’d hate to think a professional scribe thinks both words are correct:

Here comes more of the same

I wasn’t going to mention this mistake on the home page Yahoo! Movies — it’s likely just a typo, right?

And then I saw this on Yahoo! Movies and figured maybe the Einsteins who write these captions really are grammatically challenged:

All I needed was one more example of a subject and verb mismatch to convince I was right:

“Men in Black 4″ is the title of a movie. It is singular and takes a singular verb like, oh, say, maybe comes.

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.

This may not loner be your best option

Looking for some well-written articles about odd happenings around the world? Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow” has the quirky news stories; it’s the “well-written” part that’s missing:

I have no idea if “at least one” official has said something or multiple officials have said something. I also have no idea what they said.

You wrote wha?

There is just no explanation for this caption, except maybe that the writer, editor, proofreader and anyone involved with Yahoo! Shine were all non-English speakers high on glue when this was published:

You guys slay me!

And not in a good way. Trying to make a noun like slay into a verb is just hilarious.

Today’s laugh of the day comes to you courtesy of the Yahoo! front page team.

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.