Wayward Apostrophes in Newsday.com Headline

Sloppiness is becoming a hallmark of the entertainment editors over at Newsday.com. A few weeks ago, they seriously bungled the word Oscar in the headline of a story about The Academy Awards. In the headline of an Associated Press story about quarreling lovers Chris Brown and Rihanna, published on March 12th, they messed up again.

As you can see in the above screen shot, highlighted for your viewing convenience, the editors were clueless about where to place two apostrophes. By Newsday.com's account, the stars of multiple Chris Browns have fallen and the stars of multiple Rihannas may also fall. That would be an entirely different story than what appears underneath this faulty headline.

Rather than plural possessive proper nouns, those should be singular possessive proper nouns. Shame on Newsday.com copy editors for allowing the mistake to be published, but give them some credit for at least putting those wayward apostrophes in their proper places and not letting the blunder linger online forever. Pointing out mistakes and letting them linger forever on the Web is the Proofreader's job, thank you.