Here is another assemblage of less than shining achievements in journalism.

• From a review of a movie about a ninety-three-year-old designer: “She makes no attempt to deny the pains and rigors of life in her ninth decade.” Let’s see now, a three-year-old is in her first decade; a thirteen-year-old is in her second decade; a twenty-three-year-old is in her third decade. Do the math: a ninety-three-year-old is in her tenth decade.

• “It’s a real kudo for Yahoo.” There is no such thing as “a kudo.” Kudos is a Greek word meaning “praise” or “glory.” Despite the s on the end, kudos is singular, not plural.

• “Green yelled, ‘I told ya’ll it was over!!!’ ” The punctuation is a mess even before the sentence ends with that intemperate outburst of exclamation points. Apparently the writer’s MO is to just fling apostrophes around and pray they make a smooth landing. Well, the one in “ya’ll” sure didn’t. Why would anyone want to harm a nice word like all by disfiguring it with a wayward apostrophe? The correct contraction of you all is y’all. The apostrophe replaces the ou in you—just as it stands in for the wi in you will when we write you’ll or the ha in you have when we write you’ve. What missing letter or letters does the apostrophe in ya’ll replace?

• Three sentences from three articles that share one problem: “But improvements could take awhile.” “Every once in awhile, then, you feel like you’re watching an old mystery.” “Hanging around with fantastic writers rubs off on you after awhile.”

All three writers should have used the two-word noun phrase a while. It is worthwhile preserving the difference between awhile and a while. As one word, awhile is an adverb meaning “for a while.” Obviously the writer of the first sentence didn’t mean “improvements could take for a while,” which makes no sense. He should have gone with the noun phrase “a while,” making the noun “while” the object of “could take.”

The writers of the second and third sentences have mistakenly made awhile the object of the prepositions in and after. But only nouns and pronouns may be objects of prepositions, never adverbs. Claire Kehrwald Cook sums it all up in her book Line by Line: “Use the article [a] and noun [while], not the adverb [awhile], after a preposition … Use awhile only where you can substitute the synonymous phrase for a time.”

• “It is a memorial to the thousands of soldiers who fought and died in the June 18, 1815 battle of Waterloo.” Add a comma after “1815.” Most people still use a comma to separate the day of the month from the year, but many forget to put another comma after the year.

• “Our design critic’s favorite example of ‘defensive architecture’ are the wooden benches on Mission.” The writer forgot what every schoolchild learns the first week of English class: The verb must agree with the subject. The subject is “example.” The critic’s favorite example is the wooden benches. Case closed.