As far as I know, schools have only one principal. If that’s true, why did the writer for Yahoo! Shine imply that a school in Virginia has more than one principal?
I guess if there are two principals, and they sit in the principals’ office, one of them must be the principal principal.
It’s such a common mistake, that it shouldn’t be surprising to find it on Yahoo! News:
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.
Confused? You’re not the only one. The editor for Yahoo! Screen couldn’t figure out where the apostrophe goes: before or after the S? Let’ put it before and after!
If you read this headline on Yahoo! Shine, you might think that you could buy an auction, and not just the items being auctioned:
If you were smart (unlike me), you’d stop reading. But did I? Noooo. I had to see what other nonsense would emanate from this writer’s keyboard. Nonsense like capitalizing princess (when it doesn’t precede the princess’s name) and neglecting to make it a real possessive by adding an S.
But the worst? The writer’s allegation that “not many” of Princess Diana’s dress sold at an auction at Christie’s in 1997. In fact, 79 of the princess’s dresses went under the gavel. And all of them sold. All of them. The writer has confused that auction with one held much later by a woman who purchased dresses at the Christie auction and who set prices that were too high to attract bids.
I wish I hadn’t read past the headline.
I never should have read past this headline on Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow”:
This man’s inability to place an apostrophe in the correct location should have been reason enough not to trust anything he writes. Of course, I was undeterred by the error, and continued on, stumbling a few times on the misspelling of Allen Engstrom’s name:
This writer really thinks that this is correct:
Now I think he’s just stuck on stupid with three more misspellings:
Maybe I’m the one stuck on stupid for reading past the headline. Nah.
Reading this one sentence on the home page of Yahoo! Answers just made me sad:
The writer clearly has no idea how to write a simple sentence. It makes me sad that she thinks words can be capitalized without regard to their meaning. It makes me sad that she has no idea how to use punctuation of any sort. It makes me sad that Yahoo! thinks that this is acceptable on one of its most popular services.
Imagine you’re a professional writer working on the Yahoo! front page. You’re not well trained in English grammar. In fact, you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. You know, for example, that an apostrophe is required to form a possessive. And you think there’s an S required, too. But does it go — before or after the apostrophe? Here’s your solution:
Yep, if you’re unsure, put an S both before and after the apostrophe.
Me? I’m a nitpicky perfectionist, but only when it comes to other people’s grammar. I have no patience for professional writers who try so hard to be cute that they neglect basic grammar. Like the writer for Yahoo! Shine who manages to spell Jekyll and Hyde, but couldn’t figure out that babies is the plural, not the possessive, of baby:
What she should have written: baby’s.
Readers’ hearts fell when they realized that the writers and editors at yahoo.com have no idea when an apostrophe is required:
