The Wrong Word Entirely, # 10

Today's mangle is another of those pesky homonyms (but note in passing that the title of this series cries out for a comma):

Link: The Guardian/Observer, Your Problems with Anna Tims, 'instal'

The OED lists instal as a variant of install (v. 2), which means to pay by instalments. It also notes that the term is rarely found and is now obsolete, and lists only a single example, from 1679. It isn't the same word, or from the same etymological root, as the verb install (v. 1), which can mean to set in place or to invest with an office.

The related nouns follow the verbal spelling, thus instalment, which is still in use, for payments, and installment for being invested with an office, although being placed in position is denoted by the noun installation (which is also a viable variant for being invested with an office).

Oddly, Merriam-Webster lists instal as 'a chiefly British variant of install' (i.e., the obsolete word from OED v. 2).

Unless you're writing fiction set in the late seventeenth century and need a verb to describe someone making regular payments, it would probably be wise to set your spell-checker to replace instal with install.

Puny Puns and Weedy Witticisms, # 1

The Guardian's Consumer Champions generally stick to plain headlines, but occasionally attempt wit. They like this pun so much they used it twice in the space of three months in 2010. It seems not to have appeared since, so they may have realized that it's fairly meaningless, and thus not amusing, in both contexts:

Link: Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'cheque in'

Link: Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'cheque out'

Not Washed or Cooked, # 29

The main issue here is the hideous typographical error:

Link: The Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'backlooged'

However, I'm not entirely convinced by the phrasing of the statement: 'your mother should have been refunded'…

Mangling Meaning, # 12

Of course, it's not just the Consumer Champions who have occasional problems with expression; their correspondents sometimes come up with some very strange syntactical constructions:

Link: Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'No joke as "Family Guy" hacked my Santander account'

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 9

Given the state of the world's finances currently and in the last few years, this is not beyond the realms of possibility:

Link: The Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'Lloyds TSB wrecked by credit rating'

Or perhaps the writer had a cold…

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 8

I know I promised you more from the Guardian's Consumer Champions, but the Telegraph suddenly entered the fray with a hideous mangle, too good to delay:

Link: The Telegraph, 'Ukip's founder says the party has gone "completely fruitcake"'

Two for the price of one in a single sentence.

This bit's worth reproducing too:

The academic also said that he received letters complaining about the spelling and grammar used in Mr Farage’s election literature.

“There seemed to be a bit of problem distinguishing its from it’s,” Prof Sked recalled, adding that Mr Farage did admit that writing was not his area of expertise.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 28

As you might have realized from a manglepost last week, I've recently discovered the Guardian's Consumer Champions section, which is filling me with horror at the pitfalls of ever doing anything or buying anything or hiring anything or going anywhere at all, never mind ever dealing with any kind of financial institution. This is all in addition to giving me the odd wince, and occasional hysterics, at the spelling, grammatical and typographical errors.

So a short series from Consumer Champions starts today with Best in Class:

Link: The Guardian, Consumer Champions, 'backlooged'

I can't imagine why the offending word has been placed in quotation marks: it's spelt correctly both times it appears in the body of the piece.* The spirit of the Grauniad lives on!

* Perhaps the Consumer Champions use Blogger, whose spell-checker has failed to flag 'backlooger', although it has now identified 'Blogger' as problematic!

Singular or Plural? # 5

Wednesday's Times hedging its grammatical bets:

Mangling Meaning, # 11

Wise words, but a barely intelligible sentence from Mark Beatson, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development: 

Link: The Telegraph, '10 well paid jobs of the future'

The low-level punctuation can't necessarily be blamed on the speaker, though it still should have been corrected for publication; but the main winces are due to Mr Beatson's random shifting perspectives: what use are your good education and learning habits to your child's derailed career?

I also blenched at re-skill, but the OED advises that it's been around since at least 1937 (which doesn't make it any more attractive!), originally without a hyphen. It's not in Merriam-Webster at all, even though OED's earlier examples suggest it was coined in the USA.* 

* From the Chicago Tribune (1937); and in G. M. J. Veldkamp (in Western European Labor and the American Corporation, ed. A. Kamin (1970), vi. 437).

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 11

Possibly on sale at an outlet near you, this rather puzzling and very ungrammatical mug:

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 7

This is horribly familiar from newspapers' notices pages, but it features on gravestones too:

Mangling Meaning, # 10

This headline can't possibly mean what it says:

Link: Daily Telegraph, 'Millions of savers with £750bn'

Double-take, # 7

This would be (slightly) less depressing had this professional writer not, a few paragraphs earlier, referred to having studied in Glasgow for a Ph.D.:

Link: The Telegraph, Graeme Archer, 'being sat'

How many in a couple?

The Government's official website seems to have an uncommon perception of how many people can be involved in a marriage:

 Link: GOV.UK, Money and tax | Income Tax | Benefits & credits | Married Couple's Allowance

The writer might usefully consult Oxford Dictionaries (which, as previously noted, is not always 100% accurate, but is sound on this topic) to discover the correct construction and usage of comparative and superlative adjectives.

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 6

The last time this mangle came up, it was a gym; this time it's the Guardian's Consumer Champions (and it won't be the last time they feature here):

Link: The Guardian, bought for brought

Singular or Plural? # 4

The writer has lost sight of the subject noun in this sentence's sub-clause, resulting in disagreement with the verb:

Link: Daily Telegraph, 'Head attacks "unreliable" university background checks'

Perhaps 'the imposition' should have been omitted entirely, since it's superfluous.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 56

Twice it's wrong, and then suddenly it's right ― so why not correct the earlier ones?

Link: Google Books. Barbara Brink, Entangled

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 10

Dr Faustus, recently returned to the UK, has been noting problems with literacy in Reading (as in Berkshire, not reading as in books), where nominations are currently being solicited for the Reading Retail Awards, in categories such as My Favourite Coffee Shop:

The above is a detail of a poster, but research shows that superfluous apostrophes appear in several places on the Awards website, such as the homepage and the Award Categories page, where it's unclear how many judges are evaluating the entrants. There's also an excess of exclamation marks…

Dr Faustus then noticed another poster, right next to the Reading Retail Awards one:

Presumably there weren't enough apostrophes left after the Awards people finished…

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 5

Today's offering, taken from an email from the Telegraph about an IT glitch in its subscriber routine, contains a range of issues relating to clarity of expression, mainly connected to the failure to have the pronouns agree in number with the nouns to which they supposedly relate. Thus both the Technical Team and the subscribers are represented by the plural 'they', making it seem that it is the subscribers, not the technicians, who are running the tests. Then there's the fact that the subscribers, being referred to as 'that' rather than 'who', seem to have been stripped of humanity.

However, the star mangle occurs in the final line:

Double-take, # 6

This letter was published last month, but apparently sent (via time machine?) from a later year:

Link: Daily Telegraph, Comment | Letters, 13 April, 2013

Not Washed or Cooked, # 27

Hope Adroit Services Ltd are better at the plumbing than the proofing…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 26

Here are some examples of a not-uncommon mangle that shouldn't have got through a proofread, and clearly didn't have a spell-check. First, a headline:

Link: Daily Telegraph, 'Good News Britian…'

The writer may not have been responsible for the headline, of course, but it does make you wonder whether the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is an institute where spelling doesn't matter…

Now some copy, so definitely the fault of the writer, Stuart Kelly:

Link: The Scotsman, 'King Arthur, Prince of Scots'

And finally, a heading that undermines the authority of anything else on the page:

 Link: The Full Wiki, 'Great Britian: Wikis'

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 9

This mangle from January echoes one of yesterday's apostrophe issues:

Link: Daily Telegraph, 'Mid Staffs scandal: dummy taped to four-month-old baby's mouth'*

The word was correctly presented in the headline though.


* Closing quotation marks do occur in the source, but later.

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 8

Starting with the company name, apostrophes not allowed:

Link: the above is from an email, but the corresponding website page reproduces the (lack of) grammar…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 25

I remember reading somewhere a while back that this is a common error, though this is the first time I've consciously encountered it:

Link: About.com - Spreadsheets, 'Excel's VLOOKUP Function'

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 55

From a Daily Telegraph report on 15 April:

Link: The Telegraph, 'Government forcing stay-at-home mums to abandon children, say campaigners'

I wonder if they ever survey men to see if they'd prefer to work fewer hours… whether or not they're wearing hats.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 24

It would seem that Facebook's Little Helpers have no access to spell-checking facilities, nor much aptitude for proofreading:

Link: Facebook Help Centre, 'How do I see my friends' upcoming birthdays?' (item 200667833309958)

Mangling Meaning, # 9

This recent Telegraph offering reads very oddly:

Link: Telegraph, 'Thousands of Scottish pupils do not read and write well'

Simultaneously reading and writing well seems over-ambitious for pupils of any nationality. Perhaps the conjunction should be or rather than and… although the alteration doesn't make the construction feel any more like a headline.

Mangling Meaning, # 8

Today, it's a Telegraph subheading that doesn't mean what it says:

Link: Telegraph, 'Archie, the pet dog…'

The report reads a little like a Pratchett parody. Virtually everyone's age is faithfully reported, with the dog's age referred to three times in the main text and once in the caption!

Incidentally, the story does have a wag in its tail: Archie has been found.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 23

I'm looking forward to trying this new Indian restaurant and takeaway. It has an interesting menu, though this section hasn't been checked very carefully:

You Cannot Be Serious, # 20

Boston University is presently running a self-promotion campaign, online ―

Link: Boston University, 'Loblolly Pine Tree' (via the 'Keep Reading' link)

― and in a rather hideously-hued print version (in last week's Times Higher Education Supplement):

The appropriate term for this strangely structured syntax may be 'breathless'. It certainly isn't 'deathless'… Are we to suppose that this reflects the preferred house style for BU students and academics?