War of words

In a war of words between Yahoo News editors and people familiar with English grammar, the editors would lose:

Let’s hope the war of words escalates to a point that Yahoo staffers admit that they couldn’t match a verb (which should be escalates) to its subject (which is war).

Readers vow to stand up to errors

In other news, according to Yahoo News, European leaders vow to “stand-up” to Trump:

With a hyphen, stand-up is a variant of standup, which is an adjective (he’s a standup guy) or noun (he’s a comedian who only does standup). As a verb, it’s stand up, without a hyphen and the idiom that means “to confront” is stand up to, also without a hyphen.

This needs to be fixed

I wish I could say that neither the writer nor the editor needs to brush up on grammar, but I can’t. Someone at Yahoo Lifestyle needs a refresher on matching a verb to a subject:

When a subject consists of two nouns joined by neither…nor, the verb must agree with the noun closer to it. So these are both correct:

• Neither my sister nor my mother needs to read junk like that.
• Neither my sister nor my parents need to read junk like that.

A series of mistakes

A series of mistakes has lined up on yahoo.com. Here’s just one of them:

The word series is both a singular and plural noun. If it’s preceded by the indefinite article a, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s singular.  So, it requires a singular verb, like has and not have.

Says who?

This is a common grammatical mistake on yahoo.com, says blogger:

One of two words is wrong in that teaser, but which one? The hapless reader doesn’t know if one official or multiple official made a statement. Sad.

Warning: Profanity ahead

Warning: This headline from Yahoo News contains content unsuitable for children:

Lots of news outlets are now including the profane words of America’s current president, as if it were acceptable speech. But most of them are also using correct grammar and are able to match a verb and its subject. Some of them also follow standard guidelines and don’t capitalize the word senator unless it directly precedes a senator’s name.

Writing and editing are exciting

OK, so maybe writing and editing aren’t exciting — at least not all the time. Perhaps if the editors at Yahoo Lifestyle found them exciting, we wouldn’t be subjected to this:

You needs a proofreader

Just in case you need some proofreading inspiration, take a look at this from Yahoo Lifestyle:

They sat or were seated?

I don’t know what the correct wording is here at Yahoo News, I just know this is wrong:

Either were sat should be simply sat or were sat should be were seated.  The implication of each is different, so the reader is left wondering if the subjects were told where to sit. Or maybe the editor is just grammatically impaired.

That is wrong

That is just plain wrong on Yahoo News’:

If you think is should be are (because subject-verb agreement) you are right.