Repeated redundancy

Well, do you think that the editor for Yahoo Style knows what palatial means? I think not, otherwise we wouldn’t be subjected to this headline:

Readers of Style noticed the redundancy, too, and didn’t hesitate to point it out:

Did you really just write “palatial palaces”? Do you work for the Department of Redundancy Department?

all palaces are palatial, dummy. It’s the definition of a palace. It’s like spatious [sic] space.

“Palatial Palaces”? Isn’t that redundantly redundant?

Can we talk about how the headline says “palatial palaces”? I find this an alarmingly alarming grammatical alarum.

Palatial palaces? What an uncultured illiterate!

Palatial: “resembling a palace” … Thus, a palatial palace = resembling a palace palace. I take it that Maggie Parker did not graduate from a top notch journalism school.

Palatial palaces? Seriously? That’s what you’re going to go with for your headline?

This article is redundant starting from the title…

A palatial palace? Um, palatial means “like a palace”. So, a palace-like palace? As opposed to….?

Palatial palaces? So…like…palace-like palaces? Redundancy is redundant

So, if you think readers don’t care about your use of words, think again and ponder once more. They notice.

No big deal, right?

No big deal, right? Just because a professional writer for Yahoo Style has no idea how to form the plural of a name (Hint: It doesn’t include an apostrophe), it’s reason to criticize. It’s just creative spelling!

Regarding that word

To the Yahoo! Style writer: In regard to your word choice, it’s wrong.

The expression is in regard to or with regard to, or even just regarding.

Would that be a Kaiser or onion roll?

White privilege has played a roll, according to Yahoo! Style:

I’m just wondering what kind of roll it was. Was it a Kaiser roll, an onion roll, or an egg roll? I’m also wondering if an editor played a role in this homophonic hilarity.

Readers perplexed by word

Readers of Yahoo! Style were extremely perplexed by this word on the site’s home page:

Is it possible that Yahoo! Style doesn’t have a spell-checker? Or proofreaders? Or editors? You’d think that one of those would have spotted this misspelling.

It’s not a real doppelganger

This may look like a doppelganger of doppelganger on Yahoo! Style, but it’s not:

Is there anything more embarrassing than misspelling a word in a headline?

To kick off this post

To kick off this blog post about Yahoo! Style, I’m excited to share that neither the writer nor the editor knows the difference between a noun (like kickoff) and a phrasal verb (like kick off):

A couple of S’s?

It’s become almost a daily occurrence at Yahoo! Style: the inability to form possessive of a plural noun:

What the heck is so hard about this? If you’re writing about one couple, it’s couple’s. If more than one couple, it’s couples’. If you’re really confused, it’s couples’s and it’s wrong.

While I’m pondering the reason for that common mistake, perhaps you’ll solve another mystery for me: Why did the writer (and presumably her editor) refer to a boy with the pronoun her? Is this a transgender thing?

What do you call getting nauseated in a museum?

Sick at a museum? You may be suffering from ad nauseum! Sick of seeing misspellings on Yahoo! Style? Me, too. They seem to occur ad nauseam:

Neither the writer nor the editor was correct

Neither the writer nor the editor at Yahoo! Style was correct when they accepted this verb choice:

When a compound subject is joined by the correlative conjunction neither…nor, the verb must agree with the noun closer to it. That noun, groom, is singular and the verb should be was, not were.