I urge each and every one of you to ask yourself, “Am I a better writer than this Yahoo! Style hack?”
If you know that everyone should be used wherever you can use everybody, and that every one (two words) should be used when you mean each one, then you’re doing better than this writer.
It’s not every day that I say this: This is the most irresponsible writing to come out of Yahoo! Shine. Ever. Allowing the writer, Piper Weiss, who can’t spell any name longer than two letters and has a history of screwing up the simplest facts, write an article on a medical topic is outrageous.
I’ve counted about 50 errors, and I’m sure I’ve missed some. It would take the better part of the month to do them all justice. So here’s a quick recap; the proof is left as an exercise.
This should be every day:
It’s the Environmental Protection Agency. The verb should be urge (because the subject is the FDA and the EPA), and there’s no reason to capitalize the names of these fish (unless, of course, you’re a moron):
Stuff should be: protein-rich, consumed, canned, salmon, pollock, catfish:
Some word is missing here. And it should be food-borne:
Huh? I have no clue what this is supposed to be, maybe Any? Also, what’s the difference between well done and cooked through?
It’s still protein-rich. WTF does world pasteurized mean? And again with the misspelled food-borne and some other nonsense:
OK, there’s a misspelling, a dropped hyphen from off-limits, a missing capital letter in Benedict, an incorrect partial (which should be partially). And skip it should be skip them. Feta is not a proper noun. Missing hyphen in Mexican-style. And the worst of the lot: piece of mind! I’d like to give the writer and her editor and her editor’s boss a piece of my mind!
Diet coke? Is that some sort of low-cal poppy-based drug?
Is there anyone who writes for a living who doesn’t know the difference between effect and affect? Apparently, yes. And the claim that liquor CAN’T put an unborn baby in jeopardy is just a lie:
The apparent antecedent of them is effects, which makes no sense whatsoever. The sweetener is Sweet’N Low. And som how diet sodas can show birth defects. Interesting.
No time to check the spelling? It’s aspartame:
It’s should be its:
There’s a word missing here:
And another one missing here:
PPHN is Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn, not what the writer claims here. And there some missing punctuation, I think. And a misspelled antidepressant:
Your should be you’re; the comma is incorrect:
The verb should be are; the pronoun it is wrong:
This should be are:
This is kinda funny:
There is no such thing as “Saylicic acid.” Maybe the writer meant salicylic acid:
I don’t know why there’s a comma here, and yet no comma between the items in the series:
Everyone who recognizes the error in this snippet from Yahoo! omg!, please raise your hand.
I’m sure you’ll agree that every one of those errors has a negative impact on the credibility of a Web site.
Terribly Write 