Single/plural mistakes

This is becoming rampant. I see headlines every day that have a singular subject and a plural verb. People, it's not that hard. To show you what I mean, here's one from today's NY Daily News:

"Daring FDNY rescue save three from NY apartment blaze."

Now, I get why people do this but it's wrong. They think -- using the headline above as an example -- that "rescue" includes more than one fire fighter and therefore the verb should be plural. But the subject of the sentence is "FDNY" or "FDNY rescue". And either way, those are singular items. So the verb should be "saves", not "save".

This comes up with all sorts of words that imply more than one member. Couple, for instance, comes up all the time in this way. "Couple finally see Rihanna with clothes on". Nuh-uh. It's "couple finally sees..." 

Really, it's not that hard. Singular subjects get singular verbs, and plural subjects get plural verbs. So many newspapers screw this up. The scary thing is that I fear the papers' internal style sheets demand it. That's horrifying. It means there is no one in charge who understands the English language. And they're, you know, writers.

Anyway, don't fall for this. Be precise. There's a good lad!

AP's lax ways

These are two actual AP headlines that are on their web site right now:

"Netanyathu Says Word Fears About Iran to UN"

and

"Suspect in Killings Was Actor Sons of Anarchy Actor"

These headlines have been there for hours. Yoo hoo, AP. Anybody home?

Typos in headlines are great

I caught one a day ago. Now, the final headline for an AP story was "Oldest Son of Austria's Last Emperor Buried." Fine, right?

But earlier in the day that headline read "Oldest Son of Austria's Last Buried". I really liked that version. Talk about being famous for less than 15 minutes -- that title probably moves to a new person every 15 seconds.

I love this stuff.