Or maybe have the local Girl Scout troop volunteer to chop to them down.

However distracting two “tos” can be, this doubling is not to be blamed on Palin. The finger is to be pointed at the copyeditors and proofreaders at HarperCollins for letting this slip through.

As a copywriter and editor, it’s my job to find all manner or grammatical errors and smite them wherever they be. What makes my job a lot easier is if there are none to begin with. Such occurrences are worthy of praise. Kudos to you AP. Nicely done!

Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent’s first gay marriage.

The word “have”. It should be between “would” and “been”. What can I say? It’s a gift. Read the pithy article here.

Here’s a recap of some this decade’s most publicized political perversions—and if we missed anyone, please let us know! We love a good scandal as much as the next person.

The author(s) managed to put an “of” before “some”, but must have overlooked the one that should have come after it.

I suppose typos could be deadly, but no such instances come to mind. We may question the lethality of typos, but we cannot question their frequent occurrence in news stories:

In a report made public last week, NIOSH [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] said that investigators found concentrations of butter flavoring agent 2,3-pentanedione in liquid buttermilk flavoring and during production of a bakery mixes.

Delete the letter “a” and you’ve got a respectable paragraph, ladies and gentlemen.

Together they would form, in the words of their press release: “The world’s first fully-integrated media and communications company for the internet century.”

In The BBC‘s article, “Why AOL Time Warner failed to change the world,” the previous quote appeared. In the same article, however, this quote also appeared:

“Shockwaves from the merger are already being felt around the business world”.

In the first example, the punctuation went inside the quotation mark and in the second, a sentence of similar construction, the punctuation went outside the quotation mark…hmm.

Unfortunately for The BBC, not only is this second sentence grammatically incorrect, it is not consistent with the manner in which quotes are managed elsewhere in the article. I praise you, BBC, for your excellent reporting and I look forward to the day of grammatical perfection in online news copy.

“These long-overdue findings cement 2009′s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” she said.

I’m afraid the “United States Government” does not exist. There is, however, a “United States government” and a “government of the United States”. If a particular committee within the United States government were being referenced then that name would be capitalized, but “government”, in this case, is not eligible for such a privilege.

The BBC had it right in their similar article.

In the first article it was spelled “Al-Qaeda”. In the second article there were two different spellings, “al Qaeda” and “al-Qaeda”. I think most Americans don’t know which spelling is correct (if one of them is correct), but for the sake of consistency, THP should choose one and use it wherever the word occurs.

The Associated Press wrote:

The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee has completed its review into this matter and found that Sen. Burris actions have brought discredit on him and the Senate.

What a seasoned copywriter would have written:

The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee has completed its review into this matter and found that Sen. Burris‘ actions have brought discredit on him and the Senate.

A small correction, but necessary for grammatical perfection.

THP quoted Stewart as saying:

This idea that somehow getting a health care plan through takes us back to the days pre-revolution is bunk.

Stewart probably didn’t say that exactly. As a copywriter, this is what I would have written:

This idea that somehow getting a health care plan through takes us back to the pre-revolution days is bunk.

Enjoy the articles and the videos.