The Wrong Word Entirely, # 12

Des Pond of Slough provides this (which isn’t the only mangle in the piece), from a recent article in the Telegraph’s ‘Motoring’ section:

Link: The Telegraph, Motoring, Goodwood Festival of Speed 2013

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 67

When?

Link: The Telegraph, Ian Cowie

This is a reprise for the article, whose ambiguous headline featured as Mangling Meaning, # 10 in May this year. According to his byline, the author ‘was named Consumer Affairs Journalist of the Year in the London Press Club Awards 2012. He has been head of personal finance at Telegraph Media Group since 2008, having been personal finance editor since 1989…’ Apparently, however, he still hasn’t been trained in proofreading…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 40

Detail from an online poster advertising Freshblood Theatre’s production of Capital:

Link (secure): Facebook, Poster for Capital

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 66

This email needed a final check before takeoff:

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 12

Here's the text from a pop-up (with a rather nice picture, which you can see by following the link) that popped up at me last week:

Link: Great British Chefs pop-up advertisement

This issue has arisen before with kids (Apostrophe Catastrophe, # 6). The omission of the apostrophe from kids recipes makes it seem as if the kids are the key ingredient, a sense rather consolidated by the name of the application. Cooking with vegetables, cooking with spices, cooking with kids…

The application of the adjective amazing is not unambiguous either.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 65

This is a fairly common pitfall, requiring careful proofreading to avoid:

Link: Moneysupermarket.com | … | Dual Fuel

You would think that energy companies might make an extra effort to check for it:

Link: British Gas | … | Account queries

… and also employment agencies. This one seems to have run out of commas too:

Link: Total Jobs | ‘Gas Meter Installer / Duel Fuel Installer’

These should have been better checked before going to press as well:

 Link: The Family Handyman | ‘Efficient Heating: Duel-Fuel Heat Pump’

Link: Builders’ Merchants News, ‘B&Q trials duel fuel trucks’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 64

This is clearly a labour of love by someone who probably does not have English as a first language ― but surely at least the band’s name could be spelt correctly, even if just once, and the album titles copied accurately:

Link: MostlyPink.net | Led Zeplin

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 63

An old one, and a Grauniad/Observer special:

Link: Observer, ‘agony ant’

Not to be confused with this chap, who is using the term humorously and deliberately because his name is Antonio ― geddit?

Link: The Olive Press, ‘Agony Ant’

Double-take, # 11

Here is the opening paragraph of last Thursday’s report in The Independent on the occupation of Warwick University’s Senate House by Protect the Public University ― Warwick:

Link: The Independent, ‘Warwick University buildings occupied in “privatisation” protest’

Someone tell the Indie that the ‘privatisation and marketisation’ have been going on a lot longer than that…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 39

I came across this in last Saturday’s Tolygruff:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘pestel and mortar’

As far as I’m aware, pestel was a viable variant spelling in the Middle Ages, but fell into disuse during the 1600s. I might also point out that you can’t actually use the implements in this way: you grind something in a mortar with a pestle, and, yes, the pestle in particular offers possibilities for innuendo and sexual jokes, as, for instance, Francis Beaumont made clear in his play The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607, summary here).

Anyway, I now offer you an illustrated set of spelling variants (athough it is not necessarily complete; further offerings are, of course, welcome):

 Link: Head Street Gallery, ‘mortar and pestel’

Link: Wayfair.com, ‘Jamie Oliver Morter and Pestle’

Link: Houzz.com, ‘3 pestel and morter’

The first example contains only five complete words, of which two are incorrectly spelt; while the last is particularly puzzling since a search performed on the site’s search engine for the correctly-spelt term produced 63 results on 16 June 2013, so someone there knows how to spell and/or spell-check.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 62

It’s great to know that The Boss is as good as ever, but Brucefan has flagged a problem, in huge letters, on Bruce Springsteen, The Official Bruce Springsteen Website:

Link: http://brucespringsteen.net | June 17, 2013

Double-take, # 10

Des Pond of Slough sent this in with the comment: ‘Thought you might like this unusual example…’ It’s so unusual, in fact, that it’s difficult to decide how to categorize it. Is the bizarre apostrophe the key element? Or the strange choice of preposition? Or the superfluous ‘and’ after team, where a comma is needed so the syntax works?

Link: Loudwire, ‘Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson Secures $8 Million Investment…’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 61

I’m not sure what the internet equivalent of ‘hot off the press’ might be, but this instance of a failure-to-proofread-before-publishing (a separate issue from the hideous mangling of the tenses) is from today’s online Telegraph:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Quitting EU ‘would damage Britain”’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 60

Dr Faustus has been doing some heavy-duty reading. He says this text is ‘an interesting read’, and it even includes a hideous mangle:

John Rennie Short, An Introduction to Political Geography,

2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 6

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 11

It would appear that The Telegraph’s Senior Political Correspondent, Christopher Hope, likes this mangled word, since he went out of his way to quote it in an article:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Government’s £1bn rural broadband plan “a train crash waiting to happen”’

It's not entirely clear who coined it;* presumably it arrived on a press release.

* Actually, coined is not entirely accurate: there are other instances, including an article by N. Jolly in the North West Evening Mail from 17 September 2005. Here, it’s found in the title and, given the subject matter, it’s jolly hard (bad pun, but had to be done) to decide whether it’s deliberate or an error. This is the title: ‘Apopleptic over Apostrophes’. However, since the focus is incorrect apostrophes, apopleptic is probably not being used to make a point at all…

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 59

Spotted last week in the Daventry branch of Age UK:

They should have stuck with the digit…

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 58

In addition to treating gods here as if it were a proper noun, this box from The Times concludes with a spelling error:

The Times, 4 June 2013, p. 5

Problem punctuation, # 2

The Case of the Missing Comma

From The Times, 29 May 2013, p. 34.

Double-take, # 9

Des Pond of Slough received this email from the Open University last week:

which puzzled him, since that isn't his name.

There are various steps in creating a mail merge, and a late, but crucial, one is actually performing the merge… The OU later sent out an apology. 

Not Washed or Cooked, # 38

The last one in this thread is a site that featured a few days ago, and here offers a range of mangles:

Link: The Spiritual Gift | Tarot Cards Page 2

Not Washed or Cooked, # 37

There are methods of divination and character analysis other than astrology, of course:

Link: eHow | How to Calculate a Numberology Birthdate

It's a common error. The URL here hints at an earlier misspelling:

 Link: Sacred Haven | Numerology Basics

Not Washed or Cooked, # 36

An unusual planetary misspelling occurs in the book description here:

Link: American Federation of Astrologers | Books | Cal Garrison, The Astrology of 2012 and Beyond

Not Washed or Cooked, # 35

Another mangled Zodiac name:

Link: Solution Astrology | Sun Sign Basics | Saggitarius-Capricorn Cusp

Not Washed or Cooked, # 34

Continuing the thread, it's not just Tarot terms that cause problems for astrologers:

 Link: Astrology for the 21st Century, 'fullmoon virgo picses'

and, it would seem, for clothing sellers:

Link: eBay, 'PICSES ASTROLOGY Adult Unisex T-shirt. Horrorscope'

Not sure if the 'horrorscope' is a genuine error or a genuine pun…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 33

Following on from yesterday's post, here's another word that Tarot readers need to check carefully, perhaps by comparing the spelling in the heading with the card being posted beneath it:

Link: Lotus Tarot | Tarot Card Meanings | The Hierophant

This problem isn't uncommon. Here's one that might have benefited from checking the integrity of the rest of the heading too ―

Link: Spellboundsue | The Hierophant

― although, as it turns out, the spelling on the depicted card wouldn't have helped in this case:

Finally, another variant spelling:

Link: The Spiritual Gift | Tarot Cards Page 2

Not Washed or Cooked, # 32

There are some words you really should be able to spell if you're offering Tarot readings. This is one of them:

Link: The Awareness Shop | Lisa'a Tarotscopes

Not Washed or Cooked, # 31

The title of this site is pretty witty, but the typographical error here is eye-watering:

Link: Filmbuffet.com, 'Silimailr'

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 57

StudyMode.com ('Inspiring Better Grades') featured in in a post in January, which discussed the ethics of selling essays to/writing essays for students. I came across a(nother) typographical error on the site  recently, and thought it would be worth investigating it further. Here are a few of the many examples of that error (and a range of other errors arising incidentally from the search) found in essays available from Studymode's database. Do note that these are all marked 'Premium'.

Link: Studymode.com, results for search on 'Fallen angle'

A bit of a logical issue with that last one…

In super-cynical mode, I wondered whether the hideous grammatical, spelling and typographical errors are built in deliberately, intended to reproduce the kinds of mistakes that might occur in the work of this age group… Yet surely not, in essays intended only as 'reference material and thought-starters'.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 30

Yum!

Link: Dreamstime.com | Royalty Free Stock Photo: Buger and fries

Not an uncommon typographical error, in fact. More outstanding examples include:

• some self-promotion from the Ace Bu(r)ger Co, showing a link on the left, and on the right the title of the blog entry:

Link: The Brooklyn Warehouse | The Blog, 'Ace Buger Co. in the News'

• the title of a video posted on the website of WSOCTV, based in Charlotte, NC, which also suffers from inconsistent spelling::

Link: WSOCTV.com | Behind the Scenes | Bad Daddy's Buger Bar Makes the 'Pittsburger'

• and finally a news post by 'yourkiller' on BubbleWS. The error in the headline may be intended as some sort of statement, but given the inconsistent spelling in the body of the post, it's unlikely:

  

Link: BubbleWS | News | Buger Kind bought by McDonalds?!

If you're really bored, try typing the words buger and recipe into an online search engine…