Fake news!

There’s something fishy on the home page of Yahoo News:

I can’t figure out if it was the Tuscan police who released footage or the Tucson police. Judging from the fact that the incident occurred in Arizona, I’m going with the latter.

What’s with this editor?

The last time the Yahoo! Style “news editor” wrote about Charles de Gaulle Airport, she screwed it up with a bunch of random hyphens. Well, she hasn’t learned a thing in the last few months. She’s at it again:

Perhaps this woman doesn’t know that Charles de Gaulle was an actual human being and that his name does not contain hyphens, and other human beings do not get to change the spelling of his name.

Is that the best you could do?

I don’t watch the videos made by the folks at Yahoo! Style because the subjects don’t interest me. But after this, I might just have to:

I wouldn’t have caught that misspelling except I first saw it on yahoo.com:

You’d think the editors could have picked a picture that  didn’t contain a misspelling. Or maybe there wasn’t one…

Except for the mistakes, it’s perfect!

Here’s an example from Yahoo! Music written by the “managing editor”; most of the mistakes on this list are spelling-themed, but not all of them:

In that one little sentence this “editor” mistakes of for are. There are lots of acceptable ways to spell Hanukkah, but Hannukkah isn’t one of them. It’s just wrong. As is Sasha Baron Cohen. Sasha Cohen is a former Olympic figure skater. The comedian is Sacha Baron Cohen. And Erran Baron Cohen is his brother, but I don’t know if he is Sacha’s “little brother.” I do know he is Sacha’s older brother. Which is more than this editor knows.

All in all, that’s quite a few mistakes for a single sentence. But other than the typo, misspellings, and erroneous information, it’s perfect!

Worst spelling of the day

A misused hyphen isn’t the worst mistake a writer can make. It’s just the most common mistake made by Yahoo! Style writers. The worst mistake — or should I say, today’s worst spelling mistake — is this:

You might think that this is a misspelling of hombré, but you would be wrong. It is actually the writer’s pathetic attempt at a hair-coloring style known as ombré.

Fulls rush in

If I had fistfuls of cash, I’d buy this Yahoo! Finance writer a dictionary:

Here’s an idea for when you’re bored

Here’s a quick DIY for the Yahoo! Makers editor for when she’s bored at her parents’ house waiting for Thanksgiving Dinner: Let some basic, fourth-grade grammar focusing on the use of the apostrophe to form possessives:

Don’t bother with the accent

I imagine that the writer for Yahoo! Style didn’t study French in high school. If she had, she wouldn’t have misplaced the acute accent in soirée:

Yahoo! staffers just shouldn’t bother with accent marks. They get them wrong more often than right. Funny thing: The American Heritage Dictionary prefers soiree over the accented spelling. So, if you’re unwilling to refer to a dictionary (like the writers and editors at Yahoo!), skip those funny marks over the vowels and decrease your chance of making an error.

Hooked on Phonics worked for me!

Knowing how to spell words phonetically can be a useful skill — if you know how to pronounce those words correctly. That’s how this Yahoo! Style writer goes off the tracks with this misspelling of nuptial:

The word is not pronounced nup-tual. The word is nup-shel; its final syllable is the same as the last syllable of partial, not mutual.

It takes a team

It takes a team of Yahoo! Style writers to come up with this many mistakes in a single article. You’d think that one of the staffers would know how to spell Monique Lhuillier (this is a site about fashion and style, after all) or at least of the kiddies there would be familiar with “Gangnam Style”:

And Lorraine Schwartz doesn’t fare much better at their keyboards:

The article’s byline claims it was written by “Yahoo Style Staff.” I guess no one at Style wanted to take credit for this. I don’t blame them.