Showing posts with label ambiguous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambiguous. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Yahooooooooooo!

Are you ready? Seriously, there is a lot to go through here, so you better be ready. We have many - and I mean many - errors from the Yahoo! Canada homepage from the last two weeks, plus a few errors from articles we were led to via the errors on the homepage. First up, from February 23, 2011, it's an obvious misspelling of Justin Bieber's last name. Next,

this teaser from February 28, 2011 is kind of ambiguous as to who paid (and who was paid) the million dollars. Consider: jblue paid $10 to eat a burger. Who paid? jblue paid. Therefore, I find it odd that Nelly Furtado coughed up $1M to sing for Gadhafi. Putting was between Furtado and paid would clear things up nice and proper. Then,

Tim Hortons does not have an apostrophe. That's from March 1, 2011. Two days later,

there is a misspelling of artificial. I wondered how the article itself ("World first artificial bronchus graft in France" on Yahoo! Canada News on March 3, 2011) would manage with that word,

and saw that the headline did okay, but surely it should be World's first, as it was on the homepage. In the article's very first sentence,

actually the article's second word, another problem with artificial. You know, both artifical and articifial (seriously, Yahoo!?) would have been caught by a spell check. In the article's second sentence/paragraph,

both commas are missing in the date. It should read carried out on October 28, 2009, by a team. In case you think articifial was a simply overlooked typo,

here it is again in the article's third sentence/paragraph. What a fucking joke. Returning to the Yahoo! Canada homepage,

there was a misspelling of girlfriend on March 4, 2011. Also on March 4, 2011,

where did the second period go in the abbreviation of New Zealand? Or has the country changed its name to New Z? Next up,

you should be your. That was from March 5, 2011. From the same day,

it's more info about Mike Myers and his wedding, which was apparently on the top of the list of all secret weddings in history. Or it was his favourite of all his own secret weddings. Or Yahoo! meant to write top-secret wedding. Then,

on March 7, 2011, it's an its/it's homophonic error. Also from March 7, 2011,

I don't understand how this went undetected by the folks at Yahoo!. Bill Gates'g philanthropy? How does that even happen? The G on a keyboard is far from the enter key, the space bar, and the letter S. So, really, how did that happen? Naturally, I went to the article ("Bill Gates'g philanthropy costs him richest-man title" on Yahoo! Canada News on March 7, 2011) to see what was up there. First up,

the headline was exactly the same, right down to the ridiculous error. Making it even odder,

is that a few paragraphs into the article, here is the same phrase with absolutely nothing after the S. Finally,

on March 8, 2011, the Yahoo! Canada homepage featured a misspelling of St. Louis. For the first time ever, I've received this error message while adding labels to this post: The combined length of all the labels must be at most 200 characters. Consequently, several labels had to be omitted. Click an image to enlarge it.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

champ's chronic foot injury... sounded pessimistic in an interview

-- "Sorry, Forsberg (sports briefs) in Vancouver 24 hours on February 19, 2009

I'm amazed that one of Forsberg's body parts - and not Forsberg himself - could sound pessimistic. Was Forsberg's sore shoulder optimistic?

Friday, July 4, 2008

one of few people to win an Oscar after his death

-- Oscar for Ledger [cover teaser] in 24 Hours Vancouver, Friday July 4 2008

Everyone who won an Oscar on February 24, 2008 became the first few people who have won an Oscar after Ledger's death. Ditto next year's ceremonies, and the year after that, and the year after that, and so forth.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

now a breezy 10

-- Cyclists happier than drivers in 24 Hours Vancouver, Wednesday June 25 2008

Correction: now a breezy 10-minute bike ride to work

If I'm reading the article right, then buying a bike caused the writer to be able to walk to work in ten minutes - a walk that is now twenty minutes faster than before the bike purchase. Imagine how quickly she could get to work if she used her new bike to commute with!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

allowed him to smoke it in his van

This was the politician, after all, who gave a drug addict $10 to buy crack cocaine and allowed him to smoke it in his van.
-- Peter the prevailer in The Vancouver Courier, Wednesday June 11 2008

So the politician (Sam Sullivan) allowed the drug addict to smoke it in the drug addict's own van? No, the drug addict was allowed to smoke it in the politician's van. Is it ever correct to use him and his in the same sentence when they refer to two different people?

Monday, June 9, 2008

a cutie and his ex-wife

This season, Charlie romances a beautiful ballet dancer, and Alan dates a 22-year-old cutie and his domineering ex-wife.
-- Two and a Half Men: Season 3 on page 52 in Tribute, May/June 2008

When I first read this, I was surprised to learn that Two and a Half Men have a gay lead character (who dates a 22-year-old male cutie), until I reread the sentence and guessed through the ambiguity that the ex-wife probably belongs to Alan, not the cutie. How did you read it?