F***ing with Josh Groban

Yahoo! TV has been screwing around with Josh Groban’s name:

A comeback that’s too big

If you’re writing for the Web, sometimes you just have to resist the temptation to use a big font or a long word. Or a long word in a big font:  

Thanks to Yahoo! Music for illustrating the point.

Continued assault on Courteney Cox

Yahoo! TV continues the assault on Courteney Cox‘s name:

Revolutionary revolutionary

The Yahoo! front page provides a revolutionary spelling of revolutionary:

No debate about Peanuts

I’m debating whether or not new year should be capitalized in this teaser from Yahoo! TV:

But I’m not debating about capitalizing Peanuts, the name of a comic strip.

Parish Hilton is missing!

According to Yahoo! Shine Ms. Hilton is “noticeably absent” from the Celebrity Heat Index:

I wonder if they’ve looked for her in Louisiana.

I do not think it means what you think it means

Someone at Yahoo! Shine thinks the ball that drops at midnight on New Year’s Eve is heinous or notorious:

As Inigo Montoya noted, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” (That quote from “The Princess Bride” is one of my favorites.)  

Adding to the problems is the misplaced period following the closing parenthesis.  If parentheses contain a complete sentence that is not part of a larger sentence, the closing punctuation belongs within the parentheses.

A sure-fire way to nearly correct spelling

Not sure if a word should be hyphenated? Don’t worry! There’s a sure-fire way to correct spelling 50 percent of the time! Just follow the lead of the Yahoo! front page:

Let’s call a cease-fire to misspellings and dropped hyphens!

One smart way to make over your writing

To make over your writing, try distinguishing between a noun (like makeover) and a verb (like, uh, say, perhaps make over).   Then learn from others’ mistakes, such as this headline from Yahoo! Food:

With regard to the error

Yahoo! for Good doesn’t inspire confidence with this expression:

Be sure to check with your dictionary in regard to common idioms. You’ll find that the correct expression is  in regard to, with regard to, or even just regarding. But not in regards to.