Did Trump really rail about money for the WALL? That’s the question Yahoo News asks:
Did he rail or didn’t he rail? Perhaps he just asked the question, “Where is the money for … the WALL?” And perhaps the editors at Yahoo don’t know where a question mark goes when quoting an actual question. Here’s a hint: Before the closing quotation mark.
Is my face red! That’s what I’d say if I were the editor for yahoo.com:
This is a rogue monster wave:
This is a rouge monster wave:
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).
Here’s a shining example of an incorrect word choice on Yahoo Lifestyle:
It’s so glowingly bad it practically gleams. What can you glean from this mistake? That Yahoo doesn’t think competent editors are necessary and using the correct word is irrelevant.
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.
I’m scratching myself and wiping the dandruff off my keyboard over this teaser on Yahoo News:
I know what an opponent of sexual misconduct is. But what is an opponent against sexual misconduct? I think it means the attorney general of New York is a proponent of the shady activity. He’s also accused of non-consenual behavior, which is another head-scratcher. Maybe if Yahoo’s editors used a spell-checker they would tell us that it’s consensual behavior.
I’m beginning to feel that the folks at Yahoo News don’t believe in proofreading:
Somehow, the writer for Yahoo Lifestyle managed to see the roofs of the mouths of a “stylish group.” I wonder what a brightly colored palate looks like:
I also wonder why the writer and her editor don’t know that palate refers to the roof of the mouth and palette refers to a selection of colors. (I also wonder why there’s a hyphen following brightly. It’s considered wrong to put a hyphen between an adverb ending in -LY and the word it modifies.)
Are Yahoo News’ policies benefiting its readers? I don’t know what the company’s policies are, but I know what they should adopt: Requiring that headlines be proofread by an actual human being before they’re published. In that way, the Internet giant might avoid embarrassments like this:
A spell-checker won’t have caught that typo. Nor would it have flagged this as a spelling mistake:
I’m not going to say that the Yahoo editors are pulling a total con job on readers. This is just one more reminder that you can’t rely on a spell-checker. But there’s one benefit — at least for me. I learned that puling is a real word; it means whimpering or whining.
A typo isn’t unusual on yahoo.com, and generally a typo doesn’t merit attention. But when it kicks off a letter in a word critical to the readers’ comprehension, a typo is serious mistake:
The lesson for all of us: Don’t rely solely on a spell-checker to do your proofreading.
Terribly Write 