That word’s a lemon

No dancing around this word choice on Yahoo! Travel — it’s a lemon:

The fluffy egg whites on top of a lemon pie is a meringue. A merengue is a spicy Latin American dance.

Two pistols at twenty paces

Were the duel feats conducted with pistols at twenty paces? And why is Yahoo! Sports covering a duel?

You’d think a sports article would address the dual feats of the Blue Jays pitcher.

It’s a capital offense

Was an NBA team playing basketball in California’s state house? That’s what this Yahoo! Sports writer alleges, but I don’t believe him:

I think that he’s referring to a team in Sacramento, which is the California state capital. A capitol is a building where a legislature meets.

It’s not the sole mistake

I’m sure this is not the sole mistake a reader will find today on yahoo.com:

This is one of those errors that has me asking, Is the writer really, really that ignorant? careless? stupid? What? What could possibly make anyone think that sole is the correct spelling in the song “Heart and Soul”? What?

It’s too funny

It’s hard to believe that a professional writer (even one who works for Yahoo! Makers) can make this mistake:

Using the contraction it’s (which means it is or it has), instead of the correct possessive pronoun its is one of the most common mistakes anywhere, but especially at Yahoo!.

In the same article the writer makes another homophonic error. This is too funny:

Don’t give this writer free rein

The authorities in charge of Yahoo! Makers should be careful about giving this writer free rein:

She needs the help of a competent editor — one who knows that a king may reign freely, but this writer shouldn’t have free rein.

If it ends in S, give it an apostrophe

The basic rule of punctuation over at Yahoo! Style seems to be: If a word or name ends in S, add an apostrophe.

It may not be the worst mistake they’ll make and maybe there are people reading right past that error. But most people won’t get past the passed, which passes for past.

Before the tartar forms

Before tartar forms on your teeth, are they pre-calculous? And do they have homework? Makes no sense, but that’s the questions I’d like to ask the writer for Yahoo! Style:

Do you think that this Einstein meant precalculus, the class students take before taking calculus? Once we’ve settle that, I’d like to know what was transformed into a frock? I’m searching in vain for the antecedent for the pronoun it. It just isn’t in there. Perhaps she meant the student transformed them into a dress. That pronoun could refer to “pre-calculous homework papers,” velvet, and satin ribbon. Unless she used two types of ribbon: velvet ribbon and satin ribbon.

This is just not right

Yahoo! Makers’ writers display some really creative ideas — especially when it comes to the English language. I’ve references to a “right of passage,” but have never seen one that had the additional creativity of hyphens:

So wrong — and yet so innovative! Is the ability to misspell a common idiom in multiple ways a rite of passage for Yahoo! writers?

Setting my sights

So I set my sights on homophonic errors on Yahoo! Parenting and found this: