Punctuation friendly headline

Here’s a headline from Yahoo! Style that’s a tad hyphen happy:

There’s no need for a hyphen between an adverb ending in -LY and the word it modifies. The -LY is the signal to the reader that the adverb modifies the word following it.

Readers all scream “Wrong!”

If you’re quoting people who are screaming, you probably want to punctuate the scream with an exclamation mark. And unlike the writer for Yahoo! Shopping, you probably know it belongs inside the quotation marks:

Is that correct? Not by a long shot

Is this idiom used correctly on Yahoo! Style? Not by a long shot. And by that I mean, “NO!” Jeez, doesn’t the writer know that a long shot is a horse, person, or occurrence that has little or no chance of succeeding?

This writer also is a long shot for succeeding at writing. If she’s not the worst writer at Yahoo!, she’s at least a runner-up.

Woe is me!

Woe is me! I made the mistake of reading this headline on Yahoo! Style:

I couldn’t figure out if Mr. Blacc had won the writer over or bowled her over. Does it matter? This writer was obviously suffering from the encounter and it spills over into her writing.

This gal loves her some commas, which she sprinkles liberally throughout the piece along with an extraneous word or two. But the fun for us is trying to figure out how a black suit comes with a white jacket:

Let’s say fare-thee-well to “has fared him well,” because that makes no sense. This writer is obviously a tad vocabulary-challenged. Perhaps she meant “has served him well.” A dictionary might just serve her well.

What is ‘Walking Dead’ character’s real name?

Did you think the “gentle giant” on the TV show “The Walking Dead” was called Tyreese? You’d be wrong. According to the folks at the Yahoo! front page, that was a nickname or a pseudonym or something else:

Ha-ha. I kid. I am a kidder. The character is Tyreese and the mistake is Yahoo!’s by putting quotation marks around the name. They just don’t belong there. It’s like referring to the Shakespearean characters as “Romeo” and “Juliet.”

On the off chance you’re a writer…

On the off chance that the writer for Yahoo! Style would like to improve her writing, I suggest she study some common English idioms (like on the off chance) as well as the use of the hyphen to form compound adjectives (like two-piece):

It get’s an apostrophe

If it ends in an S, it gets an apostrophe. That seems to be the philosophy of punctuation over at Yahoo! Makers:

Refashion cash-in

Somebody at Yahoo! Finance needs to check the dictionary and then remove the hyphen from cash-in in the headline and the video:

It’s New Year’s Day

It’s close to being New Year’s Day on the Yahoo! front page, but someone forgot a little curvy character:

1 New Year’s Eve mistake you don’t have to make

Here’s one New Year’s Eve mistake from Yahoo! DIY that I’m sure you’ll avoid:

Don’t forget the apostrophe in Year’s. That’s it. You’re welcome.