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.
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.
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).
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.
If only there were a way to check the spelling of app names. Like, if the folks at Yahoo News had a picture of the app Grindr so that they could see how it’s spelled. Wouldn’t that be great!?
I’m not one to holler “fake news” when I see something obviously wrong online. I’m more likely to holler “Yahoo!” Yup, the internet giant makes mistakes on its pages — mistakes that are completely avoidable by a little bit of reading by its editors. Take this teaser on Yahoo News:
I can’t understand how that mistake was made. For the last month we’ve heard and read about the 17 deaths in Florida. And anyone who has been paying attention knows that 14 students and 3 staff members were victims of that tragedy. Why don’t the Yahoo editors know that?
Maybe they just don’t like to read. Maybe they prefer to exercise their imagination. Like they did on yahoo.com with this falsehood:
The pedestrian bridge that collapsed has not been open for a few days. Not even for one day. The bridge has not been opened at all. Period! (as Sean Spicer would say).
I had hope that the editors corrected the error when I noticed they updated the headline, but noooooo:
The editors still insist that the bridge opened days ago. With hope springing once more, I was sure they’d corrected the error when they updated the headline yet again:
And yet again, the alternative fact is still there. Maybe I have to reconsider my avoidance of calling obvious errors fake news.
Terribly Write 