Alter that word

The writer for Yahoo! Style altered the meaning of this sentence when she used alter instead of altar:

Alter that word

Even if this Yahoo! Style writer had used the correct word in this paragraph, it would still be a hot mess:

We all know she should have used altar, not alter (which means “to change,” but you knew that, too). But the rest of that ‘graph is complete idiocy, making no sense. Don’t bother reading it. It will only infuriate you, especially if you consider that the writer only had to synthesize a published article and she gets paid to write this crap.

Please alter two words

To the people at Yahoo! News:

Please alter two words here: alter should be altar and finace should be fiance. Thank you.

About that alter

An article was recently published on Yahoo! Shine about the TV series “Friends.” The article contains lots of minor and major errors (no surprise), and if I can ever force myself to write about them, it will make for a lengthy TW post. I don’t have the time (or will) for that, so I’ll just serve up one example that can serve as a reminder to all about the importance of word choice:

The whole paragraph is kinda a jumbled mess, but that last part is the worst. It alleges that a character on “Friends,” Rachel, dumped her husband at the “alter,” which I take to be a misspelling of altar. Rachel did run out on her wedding — but that was before the actual wedding ceremony. She dumped her fiancé at the altar.

Alter that alter

Maybe the writer for Yahoo! Shine should drag herself to a dictionary:

Then maybe she’d alter that alter so that it’s altar.

Misspelled characters, missing words, and missing the mark

This blog post from Yahoo! Shine misses the mark with a missing word here:

and the homophonic error (which alters the meaning of the sentence) here:

and a misspelled Stanford:

and another missing word here:

A misspelled Patricia Field and the mysterious use of know isn’t so great:

Let’s just call this a typo:

Couple kisses for a change

A couple kissing at the altar is hardly news. But kissing at the change? That doesn’t even make sense. But when you’re reading Yahoo! Shine, homophonous confusion is hardly new:

Jennifer Aniston: Please don’t change

Ms. Aniston apparently isn’t in a hurry to change, according to this Yahoo! Shine article:

But the writer of the article was apparently in a rush when she wrote alter instead of altar, omitted the commas around however, shortened wanted to want, and used texting shorthand for with.

Altering the meaning

Replacing the word alter with its homophone (altar) would correct one problem with this commentary from Yahoo! Movies:

But even with that correction, I’d still be trying to interpret the first sentence. Does Mr. DePalma worship more at the altar of Hitch than he worships at the altar of other filmmakers? Or does he worship at Hitch’s altar more than other filmmakers worship at Hitch’s altar? Hmmmm. What do you think?

Altering the meaning

Yahoo! Shine, a bright star in Yahoo!’s galaxy of websites, has lots and lots of articles. One article about homosexual weddings contained a particularly apt typo (or wrong word). Perhaps it’s only fitting that a homophone would creep into an article about same-sex marriages:

No doubt the author knows the difference between alter (to change) and altar (where these folks were tying the not knot). But when two words sound the same, are spelled differently, and have different meanings, it’s just too easy to use the wrong one.