The map on this year’s ‘Celebrate Christmas in Rugby Town Centre’ leaflet contains this gem (with adjacent bonus apostrophe catastrophe):
A four-word text box in which two words are variant spellings of the key term is careless. Both OED and Merriam-Webster note that the plural form deers exists, but OED calls its usage ‘occasional’, and its most recent example is dated c. 1817. Merriam-Webster makes no comment on the plural of reindeer; OED states: ‘Plural unchanged, (rare) reindeers [sic]’; and Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) British & World English rather tersely offers: ‘(plural same or reindeers)’.
The plural form reindeers is not, therefore, untenable or even inaccurate, but the inconsistency in usage is reprehensible. The more familiar form is used in the leaflet’s third mention of the beasts:
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