In what surely must be a first, the late Senator John McCain has been interred under the U.S. Capitol building, according to Yahoo News:
Although other news sources report that the senator was buried at the U.S. Naval Academy, Yahoo has scooped them all. How did that happen? Simple. The folks at Yahoo think a rotunda is the dome that covers a round building. It is not. The round building is a rotunda.
Imagine the argument by the editors at Yahoo News that resulted in this mess:
Editor 1: I think it should be “half of Americans are in favor of Congress…”
Editor 2: No, it should be “half of Americans favor Congress…”
Unable to select either option, the editors decide on a compromise, combining both suggestions and adding and subtracting miscellaneous words.
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:
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:
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.
Is there a shortage of apostrophes at Yahoo Lifestyle? Or is it just a shortage of editors who know how to use them? Here’s a headline and teaser that has me questioning if Yahoo hires only apostrophe- and spelling-impaired editors:
OK. So that was just a careless mistake (or two or three). The actual article must be better, right? Wrong. Those folks at Yahoo are still apostrophe-impaired, unable to put them in two places in one sentence:
Let’s take the charitable view that this is just a typo and not the result of a writer’s unfamiliarity with a common expression like “fill it up”:
I’d overlook this mistake (just like the writer overlooked the word to before walk), if it were the only goof, but alas, it’s not:
Another apostrophe goes missing here, but maybe it’s just the result of a malfunctioning keyboard:
But, wait! There’s more! After I wrote this post, the headline and teaser were corrected. Somewhat:
It looks like the editors noticed the missing apostrophe and the typo. Good job! Maybe next time they’ll learn to use a spell-checker and proofread before publishing. If not, I may just harass them some more.
Terribly Write 