It piques my interest when I see a mistake like this one on Yahoo! Style:
Did the writer choose to use peak (instead of the correct peek) because of the spelling of sneak?
Take a quick peek
May 29, 2016 — LauraTake a quick peek at this homophonic horror from Yahoo! Sports:
How to make Freida Pinto look bad
May 5, 2016 — LauraNot content to merely misspell Freida Pinto’s name, the news editor for Yahoo! Style has made her look illiterate, too:
Ms. Pinto knows more about the English language than this editor. She actually offered a “sneaky peek” on Instagram, which the Style editor changed it to the homophone peak.
Were they Alps?
February 10, 2016 — LauraOh, those sneak peaks! You just can’t trust ’em. Be they Himalayas, Alps, Sierras. It doesn’t matter — some peaks just love to sneak. Just take a peek at this peaks on Yahoo! Style:
Just because the words sneak and peek rhyme, don’t assume that they’re spelled similarly, unless you’re referring to mountains. Now those would be peaks.
Take a peek at this
October 21, 2015 — LauraIn this excerpt below from Yahoo! Style, you’ll get a sneak peek of the kind of errors you can expect to find on the site:
Sneak peek
October 1, 2015 — LauraIf this is a sneak peek of the quality of writing we can expect from Yahoo! Decor, I think it will be a rich source of fodder for Terribly Write:
Can you figure out what “chatskis” are?I think it’s the phonetic spelling of tchotchkes by someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce tchotchkes. That’s the worst misspelling I’ve ever seen.
Would that be an Alp?
July 25, 2015 — LauraKylie Jenner’s cap and gown, which she word for her high school graduation, are two objects, I think. Isn’t that a plural subject in this sentence from Yahoo! Style?
If that were the only problem with that sentence, I’d probably ignore it. But no! The writer had to go tell us about a “sneak peak,” which I think refers to some mountain, like an Alp. Readers might be more interested in a sneak peek of a party thrown by Ryan Seacrest. Hey, at least she didn’t tell us it was throne by Mr. Seacrest. So maybe it’s not so bad.
Was it an Alp?
March 25, 2015 — LauraWhat kind of peak is a sneak? An Alp? Take a sneak peek at this Yahoo! Style and you decide:
Take a peek at this
January 4, 2015 — LauraTake a peek at this capitalization (or rather, lack of capitalization) of Christmas on Yahoo! DIY:
Who doesn’t know to capitalize the holiday? The same person who doesn’t know that using that to refer to human beings is considered impolite. The pronoun who would be more to Emily Post’s liking.
Just one peek into this paragraph reminds us that the writer isn’t fond of capitalizing holidays like Valentine’s Day:
Or Mother Nature:
Reading that, you feel like you are really peeking into the mind of the writer, who has trouble picking the right homophone and who forgets to use an apostrophe to show that it’s kids’ art.
Try to keep your story straight
November 9, 2014 — LauraIt must be hard for some people to keep information in their heads. Some people can write a paragraph and just can’t remember what they wrote minutes later. Take this excerpt from Yahoo! Style:
We can’t expect a writer to remember that there’s no hyphen in nonprofit. Nor that there’s no “the Barbados.” Nor that amongst is considered a pretentious variation of among to American ears. But she might remember that she wrote about a foundation created in honor of Rihanna’s grandmother.
Dang! If you hadn’t told us this, I would have believed that the foundation was in honor of her grandmother:
See? She forgot what she wrote in the preceding paragraph. That’s maybe too much info for anyone to recall.
Perhaps next time she pounds out an article for which she is paid real money to write, she’ll remember that a peak is a top and a peek is a quick look:
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