At least it wasn’t tinnitus

Whew! Tinnitus, otherwise known as ringing in the ear, can be difficult to deal with. According to Yahoo! Movies, the  character Baby only suffered from ringing in his eardrums. That’s not so bad:

How one dreadful headline led to a headache

Oy. Does my head ache! And I blame it on this headline from Yahoo! Movies:

It led to my throbbing temples. What made the editor think that lead was the past tense of lead? When lead is pronounced led, it’s the stuff that’s in a pencil. The past tense of the verb lead (which is pronounced leed) is led. Which leads me to another source of my pain: That crazy hyphen before Detour. What led the editor to believe that was correct?

Except for the differences, they’re the same

The staff at Yahoo! Movies seems to be just a little bit challenged, vocabulary-wise. And facial-hair-wise, too:

That claim that Mr. Depp sported a handlebar mustache is a little misleading. This is the facial hair that the writers claim is called a handlebar mustache:

And this is a handlebar mustache:

They look exactly the same, don’t they? Well, no. They look completely different, but I quibble.

All by one photographer

I know that paparazzi can seem to be everywhere, but is it really possible that one photographer took all the pictures for this article on Yahoo! Movies?

It’s possible, but not likely. What is likely: The writer thinks that paparazzo is a plural, meaning photographers. It is not. It is the singular of paparazzi.

Judd Apatow is singular

Neither the Yahoo! Movies editors nor the writer has any idea what the correct verb is here:

When a compound subject (like reviews and Judd Apatow) is joined by neither…nor, the verb must agree with the subject closer to it. In this case, it’s Judd Apatow and the verb should be has pushed.

This isn’t baseball

Well, at least the editors at Yahoo! Movies managed to get one possessive form right in this headline:

If this were baseball they’d be batting .500.

How did you arrive at that word?

How did the Yahoo! Movies writer arrive at this word?

The verb arrive can be followed by the prepositions at, in, or on. But not to.

Bears repeating

If Daisy Ridley wore a dress that showed her midsection, it was midriff-baring. It bears repeating: When writing, don’t follow the example of the Yahoo! Movies staff:

How to effect actual change

To effect actual change in the quality of writing at Yahoo! Movies, the site would have to employ competent editors — editors who know when to use affect and effect:

If you learned that affect is a verb and effect is a noun, you only learned half the story. Both affect and effect can be either a verb or a noun. The verb usage of effect is less common than its usage as a noun, but when you need a word to mean “bring about, make happen, or cause,” the word  is effect.

Running roughshod over the language

Yahoo! Movies ran roughshod over the English language with this interpretation of a common idiom: