So, I was expecting a list of all the categories of weird ballpark food when I read this on Yahoo! Sports‘ “Big League Stew”:
Or maybe the writer meant he was going to precede all the categories with something as-yet unnamed. Or maybe the writer doesn’t know that forego means “to precede”; forgo means “to abstain from.”
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.
It’s not unusual to make a teensy, weensy mistake when you’re writing. A simple typo, like typing it instead of is, is the kind of error most readers can overlook. But there are some mistakes that readers can’t overlook and can’t forgive. One of those is misspelling the name of your subject and doing it in a headline. That’s what the writer did on Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally” when writing about a team from McDonogh School:
If only there were a way the writer could see the name of the high school — like a photo of the team wearing jerseys with the school’s name. Wait, wait! This article is accompanied by a photo and this time the writer actually spelled McDonogh correctly. Unfortunately, he misspelled Baltimore — but it’s not his fault. He didn’t have a picture of Baltimore in front of him:
But that’s just a typo, which any good proofreader would have spotted. But this is just an out-and-out error:
Perhaps it’s time the writer handed the reins over to a real editor or proofreader — one who knows that a monarch reigns and a horse is controlled with 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, 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.
The principal (or most important) principle (or basic rule) of writing is to know something about the language you’re writing in. The writer for Yahoo! Shine illustrates one possible outcome if you dare to violate that principle:
How many words can you misuse or abuse and still call yourself a writer? If you’re the writer for Yahoo! Sports’ “Prep Rally,” the answer is quite a few — at least four in a single article.
It’s clear that the writer doesn’t know when to use it’s (which is a contraction of “it is” or “it has”) instead of the possessive pronoun its:
And he can’t tell the difference between represented and representative:
Is he the only writer who doesn’t know taxes are levied and charges are leveled? I’m just wonderin’ ’cause I’ve never seen a mistake like this:
Can you call yourself a writer if you pound out an expression like this?
Anyone have a clue what that’s supposed to mean?
Ever seen someone furl their brow? Me neither. Apparently the writer for Yahoo! News‘ “The Ticket” has:
I’ve seen people furrow their brow, which creates wrinkles. But furling a brow would roll it up, which has got to be painful.
Perhaps this makes sense to the writer, but it’s nonsense to me:
Did he mean “in shielding the public from the existence of aliens”? Because that’s altogether (entirely, completely, and utterly) different from what he wrote.
With the writer’s limited knowledge of English, it seems like nitpicking to mention that Congress, when referring to the U.S. government, is capitalized, but congressional isn’t:
What’s the site of your image? The mirror over your bathroom sink?
Wherever it is, the site of your image is where you’ll catch sight of your image.
That homophonic error is from Yahoo! Shine, a site known (at least to me and regular readers of Terribly Write) for its writers’ errors. I am saddened by the fact that there’s at least one other horrific error — this time a ridiculous allegation:
If you make three boneheaded errors at the beginning of a sentence, perhaps you should stop writing and correct your mistakes, rather than continue with the sentence.
But the writer for Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow” has another idea: He’s happy to make do with the limited skills he has. He doesn’t seem to mind that New Haven got shortchanged, that due isn’t what the police made, and that a semicolon isn’t a substitute for a comma.
