Galvanized Nails for the Dummy Carpenter

galvanized (top) and bright nails

We seem to spend an inordinate amount of our time here at the Antisocial Network making fun of some of the more asinine content spread across the internet by the many journalism grads who "contributed" to eHow.com. Nowadays their dross has been pigeonholed in a plethora of "niche" websites by the company that owns eHow (Leaf Group), but the new surroundings don't do a thing to make it better. It's fairly common for one of our research staffers to find stupidity in the introduction to an eHow post, sometimes even in the first sentence: observe returning DotD Elyse James and her Hunker.com post, "How to Tell if Your Finished Nails Are Galvanized." You'll see what we mean...

The answer's pretty simple: if the nail has a dull, light gray coating that's somewhat rough, it's galvanized. If it has a smooth, shiny surface, it's not; and if it has a greenish-gold color, it has a coating but isn't galvanized. Now, let's address the word "finished": there's no such thing as a "finished nail," it's a finish nail or a finishing nail — those are the light-gauge nails with small heads used for putting up molding and other applications where the head has to be unobtrusive.

James didn't know that. In fact, she didn't even seem to notice the word "finished." Instead, she launched directly into her post by parroting something she'd read in another eHow post (also now at Hunker):

"Galvanized nail — more commonly referred to in construction as roofing nails — are nails that are dipped in melted zinc..."

Yes, Elyse (and Luc before her) did tell the world that all galvanized nails (including finish nails) are "roofing nails." Never mind that not all roofing nails are galvanized... and that not all galvanized nails are hot-dipped.

Here's where our sense of wonder is piqued: we wonder how the hell anyone could believe another word our Dumbass of the Day said after that bullshit? How, indeed.

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