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.

As they are wont to do

Readers of the Yahoo! front page won’t be surprised to see that editors neglected a little punctuation, as they are wont to do:

The verb wont means “to make accustom to”; as an adjective, it means “accustomed, used, or likely.” It’s the contraction won’t that means “will not.”

What could be wrong with this?

It’s not hard to see what’s wrong in the opening paragraphs of this article on Yahoo! Shine:

Of course, we all know that the word duchess isn’t capitalized unless it’s part of the full title, like “Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.” And we can all spot the missing word before “Kate Middleton.” (And by “all” I mean everyone in the English-speaking world except the writers and editors for Yahoo!.)

What could possibly be wrong with this — besides the name of the doctor? He’s Stephen Greenberg and he’s a New York-based doctor, who probably knows you don’t need both a dollar sign and the slangy “bucks”:

So, here we have the writer who again demonstrates her inability to copy a simple name and her ability to screw up a simple fact:

That quote isn’t from Dr. Greenblatt’s receptionist — or even Dr. Greenberg’s receptionist — it’s from Dr. Greenberg’s patient.

At least she got the doctor’s name right, but the name of the hospital (it’s Lenox Hill Hospital) wrong:

Other than getting the facts wrong, capitalizing words indiscriminately, omitting a word or two, neglecting punctuation, and adding a redundant word or two, this article is perfect!

Was that after the invention of oxygen?

You don’t have to be an expert in proofreading to know there’s a word missing in this excerpt from Yahoo! Shine:

You don’t have to be a history expert to know there’s a hyphen missing in Spanish-American War.

You don’t have to be a science expert to know that there’s a screw missing in the writer’s cranium. Radium, like other naturally occurring elements, was not invented. Except maybe by God.

John Mayer: A real lady’s man?

Is John Mayer a “man who enjoys and attracts the company of women”? Yes, he is, although I cannot imagine why women are drawn to him. Anyhoo, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, that makes him a lady’s man. Or even a ladies’ man. But not this, which appeared on Yahoo! omg!:

‘Tis the season for missing punctuation

‘Tis the season for missing apostrophes and typos on Yahoo! Shopping:

The word ’tis is actually a contraction for it is and requires an apostrophe to indicate a missing letter.

David O. Russell and ‘The King’s Speech’

Let’s just say that you don’t need to be an expert on movies or writing to write about movies. You can misspell David O. Russell’s name and skip the apostrophe in “The King’s Speech” and still be employed by Yahoo! Movies:

Heck, that’s no worse than writing about the Jewish-Irish producer David O’Selznick.

Man, what hours!

Man, those folks on the Yahoo! front page are really ignorant of English, aren’t they? Who doesn’t know that man-hours needs a hyphen? Oh, yeah, that would be the person who wrote this:

Shavin’ a little from clean-shaven

The adjective clean-shaven gets its hyphen shaved off at the keyboard of a Yahoo! front page staffer:

Absolutely appositively wrong

It’s a little thing, but it means a lot. At least to me. I’m talking about the comma, of course. And about the grammatical geniuses on the Yahoo! front page who have no idea when to use one:

Here’s a hint: There’s a comma missing after the word installment. And for those who are still following along, it’s required because Skyfall is in apposition to installment.

An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that defines or further identifies the noun or noun phrase that precedes it. If an appositive is essential to the meaning of the noun preceding it, then there’s no comma between the two. So, this would be correct:

The hit singer lends her lush vocals to the 007 installment “Skyfall.”

If the noun preceding the appositive provides sufficient identification on its own, use commas around the appositive. The title “Skyfall” is an appositive. It’s not essential to uniquely identify the noun installment  because there’s only one next 007 installment; there’s no confusion about which 007 movie the writer is referring to.

The hit singer lends her lush vocals to the next 007 installment, “Skyfall.”

So, that’s the grammatical geek explanation. My explanation is, put a comma wherever you think there should be a pause.