Can’t make a decision?

Can’t decide how to spell a word? Can’t figure out if it should be hyphenated or not? Don’t consult a dictionary. Just do what the folks at Yahoo News do: Spell it both ways!

Is this a case of fake news?

If a major Internet news site like Yahoo! News writes a headline about someone it calls Greg Allman, is it fake news?

The editors haven’t just misspelled Gregg Allman’s name; they’ve overcapitalized or undercapitalized the name of his band. It seems they just can’t decide if it was the Allman Brothers Band of The Allman Brothers Band.

If you can’t be right…

If you can’t be right, at least be consistent. That’s advice that the folks at yahoo.com could use:

It looks like they couldn’t agree on how to abbreviate United Kingdom. Legitimate news outlets use a little something called a style (or editorial) guide so they avoid embarrassments like this.

Plus-size errors

What to do? What to do? What does one do if one can’t decide if a compound adjective needs a hyphen? Well, if one works at Yahoo! Style, one hyphenates it once, and leaves it unhyphenated once. Problem solved!

That solution is neither appropriate nor correct, just as the use of the word or, instead of nor, with neither is wrong.

Time warped

When you create a feature for your website, you really need to decide how you’re going to refer to it. Don’t make the mistake that the editors at Yahoo! Style did. They can’t seem to agree on the spelling of this feature:

Is it news to you?

Did the writers and editors at yahoo.com overlook the fact that someday they might have to write about New York City and that they might want to abbreviate the city’s name? Yup. I know that because they can’t agree on how to do it. Somebody thought it needed periods:

and somebody else thought, uh, no. No periods:

That’s kinda embarrassing. Or at least it would be embarrassing to a real news outlet that carried about things like consistency and that had and followed a style guide.

Stuck on stupid

Sometimes I think the editors at yahoo.com are just stuck on stupid. They keep repeating the same mistakes. A few days ago, they couldn’t agree on how to refer to a Mexican drug lord. And today, they’re faced with the same issue. Is his name simply El Chapo?

Or is it Chapo and does it require quotation marks?

I’m thinkin’ that maybe the editors don’t know that they’re in disagreement because even they don’t read yahoo.com.

Pick one

Displaying once again that the people who write for yahoo.com have no means to communicate with each other, someone decides that a drug lord’s nickname needs to be in quotation marks:

while a colleague decides the punctuation is unnecessary:

It doesn’t matter which one the writers and editors chose. They should just pick one style and go with it. But first, they need to establish a way to communicate their decision. I hear there are communication methods like telephone, email, instant messenger, and tin cans connected by a string. One of those might work.

You write the top, I’ll write the bottom

There seems to be some confusion on yahoo.com about an interest hike. Or maybe there are interest rate hikes. And who’s responsible? It’s either the Fed or the fed. Whatever:

Do you work for the same company?

It’s hard to believe that the people who write or edit yahoo.com ever communicate with each other or refer to any authority, standard, or style guide. It’s also hard to believe they even work in the same country. Most Americans know that when you refer to the House of Representatives as the House, you need to capitalize it:

At least that writer didn’t capitalize speaker because it doesn’t precede the speaker’s name.

Well, it looks like someone at yahoo.com knows to capitalize House. But the capitalization of Speaker? That’s wrong.