Double-take, # 52

Someone on the database team seems very confused over this author’s name (and gender):

Link: Amazon, Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau, Men at War 1914—1918 […]

The shortcomings of optical character recognition explain (but do not excuse) Sta(c)Phane and St Phane, but Stephanie remains a puzzle.Stephanie Audoin-Rouzeau; Sta(c)Phane Audoin-Rouzeau; St Phane Audoin-Rouzeau for Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau

Double-take, # 51

The BBC doling out misinformation in series 4 of Shaun the Sheep:

Edited from screenshot of BBC iPlayer 21 February 2014.
Information now replaced by subsequent programming information

As Des Pond of Slough observes, a spider is not an insect.
a spider is not an insect

Not Washed or Cooked, # 115

The BBC mangling spelling in Death in Paradise, series 3, episode 6 (‘The Early Bird’):

tresspassers

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 113

Dr Faustus has come upon this gem:

Stephen S. S. Hyde,  Cured! The Insider’s Handbook for Health Care Reform (Denver, CO: HobNob Publishing, 2009), p. 262. Link: GoogleBooks

infarction for infraction; criminal infarction

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 112

Brian Appleyard briefly takes his eye off the ball in a review of Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us by Jesse Bering:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Review: Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us […]’

thought for though

Double-take, # 50

Dr Faustus today turns his attention to a problematic preposition:

Link: BBC News, ‘The Papers’, 15 February 2014

in to for into: in to second place

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 31

Dr Faustus continues in his quest to root out apostrophe catastrophes. Today’s comes from a review published in The Oxford Student:

Link: The Oxford Student, ‘Breathing Corpses has no skeletons in the closet […]’

It transpires that it’s occurs frequently in the review, but in the other six examples, the apostrophe is correctly inserted. There’s also another its, but that one is correct. These, therefore, seem to be an aberration…

its for it’s: its because its not

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 34

Link: ThreatPost, ‘Certificates Spoofing Google, Facebook, GoDaddy Could Trick Mobile Users’

How unkind of them.
mocking legitimate certs

Double-take, # 49

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘It was a mistake to stop dredging […]’

Surely calls can’t be anything but vocal, so how can their vocalness (vocality? Vocalisticness?) increase? increasingly vocal calls

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 30

Dr Faustus spotted this in his Facebook newsfeed:

Link: Facebook (member access only), post at Thursday, 6 February 2014 at 13:20

Why not opportunity’s and wage’s?
Cook’s & Chief Cook’s

Not Washed or Cooked, # 114

Kittens with a mangled caption:

Link: CSL Cartoon Stock | Balls Of Yarn Cartoons and Comics | Balls Of Yarn cartoon 1 of 5

actuallly

Not Washed or Cooked, # 113

Whoops!

Link: University of Warwick, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, ‘Essay Deadlines’

submissin

Not Washed or Cooked, # 112

Courtesy of Dr Faustus, below is a detail from a screenshot of the checkout page of Arcola Theatre’s website, offering latecomers a possible mangling:

addmitted

Double-take, # 48

Another (slightly edited to protect the guilty) snippet from the inbox of Dr Faustus:

entry person person

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 111

Exhibit A was found in an email from House of Fraser on 7 February 2014. Unfortunately, although an apostrophe is inserted where there should be one, and none where there shouldn’t, the message seems not to have been proofread:

Exhibit B is a double-page spread in the Rugby Observer, in which the newspaper’s headings omit the apostrophe, as do most of the advertisers (and note the bonus Mothers Day), although the hotel wins kudos for using the possessive correctly:

Link: Rugby Observer, 6 February 2014, pp. 14-15

In case it’s too small to see properly (a zoom function is available on the publication’s website if you want a closer look), highlights include the bet-hedging wedding venue that has some-with-and-some-without, and the pub that recasts 14 February as ‘Valentine Day’, presumably in order to avoid the pesky apostrophe issue entirely.

As far as I can see, there’s not a single reference to the saint for whom the day is named…

you boudoir; Valentine Day; Valentines Day; Mothers Day

Double-take, # 47

Adding insult to injury in a caption in The Telegraph:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘UK flooding spreads to the Home Counties’

The village’s name is, of course, Chalfont St Peter; there should be a comma after ‘pub’; and the writer should have chosen between ‘into High Street’, without the article, and ‘into the high street’.

halfont St Peter; the High street; the pub The George

Double-take, # 46

Another strange formulation:

Link: Purest Linen, ‘Plain Polycotton Napkin’

used for daily use on the home

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 110

Old Chelsea spotted a rather odd list of ‘Diet recommendations’ in an NHS ‘rehabilitation unit’. This is the most mangled section:

brawn toast &c

Double-take, # 45

This contains something odd:

Source: DamnTexts.com via Facebook

alphabets for letters

Double-take, # 44

From an (edited to protect the guilty) email received by Dr Faustus on 3 February, 2014:

submit by 3 March 2013

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 109

From one of Bar-Ilan University’s Lectures on the Torah Reading:

Source: Jonathan Jacobs, ‘Balaam and His Ass: The Significance of the Story’ (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel)

angle of the Lord

Not Washed or Cooked, # 111

On sale at The Range in Rugby:

glass bouy

Double-take, # 43

On sale recently at Lidl in Rugby:

Granny Apples

Double-take, # 42

Yesterday a missing word, today a superfluous one:

Link: BBC News, ‘Meredith Kercher family: We’re still on journey to truth’

Although I spotted it on the BBC, it’s not clear where the mangle first appeared (or the translation, since presumably the original statement is in Italian), but the media have been idiotically reproducing it all over the place:

Link: Google, search for "real and actual the danger that Sollecito"

The screenshot was taken on Sunday. When I repeated the search on Monday, the number of results had doubled… Today the score is 1,660.Where will it end?
real and actual the danger

Double-take, # 41

Quite a lot of possibilities for today’s missing word round:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘“Amnesty” for 100,000 middle class professionals refusing self-assessment’

professionals who have been by controversial changes

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 33

From an email forwarded by Dr Faustus. I’ve blanked out departmental and institutional information to protect the guilty:

insite for insight

Not Washed or Cooked, # 110

Another mangle from a source that should know better. You’d have thought the adjacency of the wrong and right spellings might have leapt to someone’s eye — until you notice that both the headings above the biography text erroneously refer to its subject as ‘Simone Beauvoir’…

Source: European Graduate School, ‘Simone Beauvoir [sic]—Biography’

Jean-Paul Satre, Simone Beauvoir

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 29

From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a generally excellent reference work, although perhaps not thoroughly enough proofread for ‘A Peer-reviewed Academic Resource’:

Link: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986)’

doctor’s for doctors