What happens? Do you get any error associated with the issue?

did you go to to the edit function for your contact list and select to edit the information on that person?

No errors.

Go to contacts, edit, correct the spelling, save, and it looks correct.

Then I close yahoo, reopen, go to compose and there it is again spelled incorrectly, like before edit.

I would choose to delete completely the contact from the list close out yahoo reopen then add new contact and add it correctly apply save.

I first attempted to delete completely and failed.

Then I attempted to correct the spelling and failed.

I must be overlooking something ridiculously simple

well I had to try it even though I never use my yahoo email, I had no problem at all, I added a new contact by hitting the gold save button, closed it opened it, fine. I then went back to contacts hit the gold edit button and changed the spelling, saved, fine. I even did the delete using the little trash can icon. every thing I tried worked fine.
Does this only happen with one contact or with any that you try to alter?

when you did your edit or save did it show a new little box in your window showing the spinning icon showing that it was doing something then show it corrected?

Thanks. I went to IE and was successful. With IE I did not find a delete icon but I did find an unlabeled square and a mouse over showed it to be delete.

There are a few other places where I am missing a box or an Icon e.g. at NetFlix I have no box for update the queue, I know where it should be and do a mouse over and the update label drops down.