Not even tryin’

The writer for Yahoo! Movies isn’t even trying to spell Jason Sudeikis and Colin Farrell:

How does one make up the spelling of names and still have a job?

Written by a so-called professional?

Even so-called professional writers make grammatical, punctuation, and spelling mistakes — especially if they work for Yahoo!. Take this example from Yahoo! News‘ “The Sideshow,” where the writer believes that quotation marks belong after the expression “so-called”:

They don’t. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “Quotation marks are not used to set off descriptions that follow expressions such as so-called and self-styled, which themselves relieve the writer of responsibility for the attribution: his so-called foolproof method (not ‘foolproof method’).“

That’s a common mistake. On Yahoo!, there are a lot of common mistakes, like failing to match a pronoun with its antecedent (the word it refers to). And failing to hyphenate modern-day when it’s used as an adjective, misspelling Flintstones, and best of all using peddles instead of pedals:

This is more akin to a careless error:

And any decent spell-checker would have flagged Minnealpolis as a misspelling:

But for Yahoo!’s so-called journalists, spell-checking is optional. Heck, it’s not just optional, it’s nonexistent.

Just to be sure we understand that Jeff Stone is a Republican state representative, the writer tells us in two slightly different ways, each containing its own errors:

If you think I’m the only person who is appalled by this professional writer’s ignorance, you’d be wrong. Here’s one comment left by a reader:

“using peddles underneath their seats”
“PEDDLES”???? Jeezuz Joe Bob. My 6-year-old can write better than this. Apparently they’re trying to solve the unemployment problem by giving illiterate idiots jobs writing “news” articles. Sheesh.

It can accommodate another letter

It’s one of the 100 most frequently misspelled words, so maybe we should expect to see it misspelled in a headline on Yahoo!. This time it’s in Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally”:

You’d think that the writer or editor or proofreader would know that the word can accommodate one more M.

Trying to work it out

Here’s a question for you: Why do the writers and editors at Yahoo! Shine think that workout is a verb?

The verb is work out. The noun is one word: workout. Think of it this way: If workout were a verb its past tense would be workouted.

More sketchy spelling

The last time I saw this spelling of Skechers, it was on Yahoo! Shopping. This time it’s on Yahoo! Shine:

Peekaboo boo-boo part two

What dictionary did the writer for the Yahoo! front page use to check the spelling of this?

According to the dictionary you’ll find on Yahoo! (the American Heritage Dictionary), there’s no hyphens in peekaboo. According to the folks at yahoo.com, there are two of them.

It’s Tobey Maguire and Quai Laubeuf

At least it should be Tobey Maguire and Quai Laubeuf in this photo caption from Yahoo! Movies:

Apparently the ability to spell — or even do a Google search — is not a requirement at Yahoo!. 

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.

End the reign of error!

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.

Steve Carell would be so much better

You know what would be better than this from Yahoo! Screen‘s “Daily Shot”? If the writer had taken the time to learn how to spell Steve Carell’s name. And if the writer had taken the time to figure out how to write a link:

You’d think that someone working for one of the biggest Internet companies in the world would know how to do both.