Not Washed or Cooked, # 109

Today’s example comes courtesy of Craig Robert Bruce. I’ve included a large area to show that it’s rather messed up throughout, but the job title is the main mangle:

Link: Directgov | Universal Jobmatch | Jobs ‘Mad About Books: Computer Opporater’

Computer Opporater

Not Washed or Cooked, # 108

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Oh. Maybe they do…

Link: About.com, ‘The Poetics of Aristole [sic]’

Aristole

Double-take, # 40

An odd variant on an old expression here. Yes, there are foothills (a geographical term), and yes, one can stand at the foot of a hill (where ‘foot’ means the lowest part),* but this is not a viable option:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Claire unveils tasty plans for Gibbett Hill farm shop’

* Thus confusingly equating to ‘bottom’… Isn’t English wonderful?
feet of the Cotswold hills

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 32

I’m not going to flog this one, although there are many more variants out there. However, following on from yesterday’s mangle, it was hard to resist featuring a couple more accidentally well-educated body parts:

Source: Virginia Andrews, Scattered Leaves (London: Simon & Schuster, 2007), p. 46. Link: Google Books (eBook)

Link: Fitness Magazine [South Africa], Ben Greenfield, ‘Tips to tight and taught skin […]’

taught skin, taught lips

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 31

I came upon a version of this mangle on a website and wondered if it appeared in any books. Oh, yes:

Chris Coulter, The Deal (self-published through Xlibris, 2012), p. 60. Link: Google Books

That was but one of the results returned on a Google search that also offered the correct spelling:

Link: Google search, “taught buttocks”

If you click the Coulter link above you’ll get more (and more sexually explicit) context for the mangle, and it’s worth running the Google search just to see the term in various other (often sexually explicit) hilarious contexts. (Have I made the sexual explicitness warning clear enough?)

taught buttocks

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 108

Source: supposedly personalized page from email link

Hmmm… No, I think I’ll just blacklist you.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 107

Not an exciting or confusing mangle today (and out of context, the meaning isn’t very clear), but still one that shouldn’t be there:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Government to pay rail firms […]’

Double-take, # 39

This is both badly-punctuated and ambiguous:

Link: Daily Star, ‘“You’re lucky I didn’t knock you out” […]’

Investigation reveals that the article discusses a policeman being filmed in the act of threatening a photographer, not a policeman taking footage of a threatening photographer.

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 28

Not a well-placed apostrophe on this DVD cover:

It’s definitely a collection of films from the 1960s, not from 1960.

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 30

A not very unprofessional scam attempt via email:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 106

Dr Faustus has found another error in information posted by and for the Warwick Economics Summit:

Link: Warwick SU, ‘Warwick Economics Summit 2014’

It’s not clear if this is a typographical error or whether someone thinks it’s actually a word.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 105

Dr Faustus has also found this gem:

Source: article by Wilford E. Smith published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 10: 2 (1976), 76-78. Link: Dialogue

Not Washed or Cooked, # 104

New conference season, same old mangles.* Spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: Warwick Economics Summit 2014, ‘Accomodation [sic]’

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…


* See Not Washed or Cooked, # 73 for a range of earlier offerings.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 103

Just found this mangle in an online questionnaire issued by the library of a Russell Group university:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 102

This is the text from a poster spotted by Dr Faustus on the official Thorpe Park Facebook page:

Source: Facebook, Thorpe Park Official

Not Washed or Cooked, # 101

This (rather suggestive, or is that just my mind?) subject line of an email sent by TimeOut to Dr Faustus has not been checked before sending:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 100

The rest of the week comes courtesy of Dr Faustus. This instruction seems to have been typed in a rush:

Link: The University of Warwick, Warwick Economics Summit, ‘Internal Tickets’

A good spellchecker will flag such duplications, but those built into software for creating and editing material for the internet may not do this. (Blogger’s doesn’t.) This is one reason why it is usually better to use a word processor for composing text intended for a webpage; the text can then be copied to the webpage when it has been fully checked.

Double-take, # 38

A stray comma precedes impossibility and confusion:

Link: Warwickshire Police Online News, ‘Computer users in Warwickshire and West Mercia warned […]’

Or as the contributor, Des Pond of Slough, succinctly put it: ‘Eh?’

Double-take, # 37

This is comprehensible at the start, but quickly goes very wrong:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Troubleshooter: Be on guard’ — ‘Unsporting price rise’

Double-take, # 36

The missing word round:

Link: Wiktionary.org, ‘ostensoir’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 99

Link: ebay.co.uk, ‘TRODAT DATE STAMP […]’

I hope not! The word is correct everywhere else on the page, but I can’t decide whether that makes this mangle better or worse…

Mangling Meaning, # 24

There Is Something Very Wrong With This Statement:

Link: QuickMeme, ‘There Is Something Very Wrong With Women Magazines...’

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 27

Covering all bases and hedging all bets, apostrophe-wise:

Link: St Marie’s Catholic Church, Rugby

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 107

Dr Faustus sent this in:

Link: BBC Four, Only Connect, ‘Pilots v Globetrotters’ (Series 8, Episode 5)

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 106

Carelessness or overexcitement?

Link: World Penis Average Size Studies Database

Not Washed or Cooked, # 98

Jeremy Paxman was scathing on a recent Celebrity University Challenge when no-one knew the name of the feast that commemorates the three wise men visiting Jesus. I wonder what he would make of this little lot, none of which has seen a spellchecker, and all from sources that should know better:

J. C. Cooper, Dictionary of Christianity (Abington and New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 128. Link: Google Books

Link: Matt Jenson, ‘Ephiphany and the Bible’, The Scriptorium — a blog by the Faculty of the Torrey Honors Institute

Link: St. Dunstan of Canterbury Anglican Church, Scarborough, Ontario

Mangling Meaning, # 24

I haven’t been able to track down the source of this one, but it’s another grammatical fail:

Problem punctuation, # 9

Random inclusion and omission of commas from the blurb on the Wheelock’s Latin website:

Link: The Official Wheelock’s Latin Series Website

It’s not apparent whether this error has been taken from the blurb on the book, but comparison with the similar text (but dissimilar punctuation) on the Google Books information page suggests not.

You Cannot Be Serious, # 23

A range of lexical, grammatical and syntactical errors here. Not bad for a cat though!

Link: Holistic Pet Journal, ‘Cat Purrs Healing Power’

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 29

Quite difficult to decide which category these belong in. Submitted by John Holloway, they are not quite mangling English as such, but certainly mangling in English!

Link: BBC iPlayer, 15 Minute Drama, ‘The Tale of Mr Toad’

(No link supplied)

Not Washed or Cooked, # 97

These are both captions. The first stands alone:

Source: The Times, 24 December 2013, p. 3

The mangle of the second caption is evident in juxtaposition with the photograph it is illustratrating:

Source: The Telegraph, 24 December 2013, p. 10