Not Washed or Cooked, # 122

So good they named it twice!

Link: Cooklands, ‘Jam and Preserves’ menu

jaming

Double-take, # 60

Link: Rugby Observer, 13 March 2014, p. 3

Des Pond of Slough found this appalling piece of journalism, but was so disgusted by the tautologous statement in the first paragraph — ‘near fatal’ (which should be hyphenated) = ‘fighting for his life’ — that he didn’t read any further, thus missing out on the wonderfully bathetic, completely contradictory and accidentally humorous juxtaposition relating to memory across the first two sentences/paragraphs, plus the typographical error in the third. I admit that I stopped reading at this point…

near fatal + fighting for life; amnesia + never forget; Dunhcurch

Not Washed or Cooked, # 121

A recent marking email brought a homophonic mangle, two spell-checking failures and some unfortunate punctuation:

there for their; secruity for security; vunerable for vulnerable

Double-take, # 59

This mistyped Ancient Egyptian god is not the first mangle Dr Faustus has spotted on the BBC’s Only Connect:

Source: Only Connect, Sport Relief: Scribblers v. Terriers, BBC4, 17 March 2014. Link: iPlayer

Hours for Horus

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 39

This was in an article in The Daily Telegraph about the forthcoming film Noah:

Source: The Daily Telegraph, ‘“Noah” engulfed by wave of criticism’, 24 March 2014

The offending word is correct in the online version, but Times Live’s reproduction of the article in full, complete with error, suggests that an earlier online version might not have been correct.

arc for ark

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 38

This week seems to be developing a theme… From Dr Faustus comes another misused word:

Link: Swansea University/Prifysgol Abertawe, DACE/AABO, S.O.S. Student Online Support, ‘Awkward Spellings’

I’ve included the subsequent sentence as it seems to have something wrong with it. Perhaps compiled of should be compiled from or, better, This list is a compilation of…

Of course, since the words are correctly spelt to aid the challenged students, who clearly (but oddly) are assumed to lack access to a spell-checker, the sentence’s basic proposition is problematic… but not as problematic as the source: the acronym DACE/AABO expands to the Department of Adult Continuing Education/Adran Addysg Barhaus Oedolion, for which this page is not a good advertisement.

alludes for eludes

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 37

This notice, found on display in a care home, has several examples of acyrologia:

The misuse of bought for brought featured in The Wrong Word Entirely, # 1. It’s accompanied here by a confusion of insure for ensure and attain for obtain, and some odd phrasing and punctuation overall. Perhaps it’s intended as a test of the inmates’ mental faculties…

bought for brought; insure for ensure; attain for obtain

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 36

Not the only example around of this glorious howler:

Source: Isa-Lee Wolf, Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011), p. 138. Link: Amazon.co.uk

corporal for corporeal

Not Washed or Cooked, # 120

This needed checking before posting:

Link: Wikipedia.org, ‘World War I in literature’ | Memoirs

armitice

You Cannot Be Serious, # 24

Unhelpful use of pronouns:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Bampton: infamy in the Prime Minister’s back yard’

Which ‘he’?
unclear pronoun, he with two male subject

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 35

Des Pond of Slough found a motor museum at the weekend. This is part of an exhibitor’s notice:

It’s not easy to work out how this verbal substitution occurred.
depute for debut

Double-take, # 58

From Sparknotes on Paradise Lost:

Link: Sparknotes, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VIII

I’m glad they sorted that one out!
pairs of two

Singular or Plural? # 6

This subheading’s confusion in number may well arise from having too many nouns ahead of the verb:

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘A quarter of flood claims face risk of rejection’

small print in home insurance policies from Admiral and Co-op refuse

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 116

This starts with a failure to spellcheck and becomes worse as it goes along, culminating, as Des Pond of Slough observes, in a blissful mangle in the final sentence:

Link: Abbey Pumping Station Museum, Leicester

sicence; graffited; see-through bowel and cistern

Double-take, # 57

Someone wrote this on a classroom whiteboard at a prestigious university, but didn’t bother wiping it off. The red pen was my addition, in case the culprit returned:

British Ciziten

Double-take, # 56

Eye-watering grammar at Sainsbury’s in Rugby (and probably at a store near you, if you’re in the UK):

grammatical stew; adjectives and verbs

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 115

The omission of the direct article here makes quite a difference to the meaning:

Source: Robin Allen, Out of the Frying Pan (Woodbury, MN: MIdnight Ink, 2013), p. 160. Link: Amazon

omitted the

Double-take, # 55

On sale last year at the Godiva Festival:

kids for sale?

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 114

Available on eBay:

Link: eBay.co.uk, ‘Dog and cat mugs […]’

deigns for designs

Not Washed or Cooked, # 119

An ‘ouch’ moment in a recent copy of Soft Top Hardtop [sic] magazine:

Source: Soft Top Hardtop: The Magazine of the MX5 Owners Club, 20:3 (February 2014), p. 12

thier for their

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 34

It’s not clear who mangled the number of wits in this rather bizarre statement from a letter to The Times’s Troubleshooter column:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), Troubleshooter, ‘BT worse than flood’

Oxford Dictionaries confirms that wits should be pluralized.
wit’s end

Double-take, # 54

John Holloway comments: ‘A friend of mine received this text the other day. It was sent out to an entire year’s worth of parents! It adds a whole new meaning to the line, “If you go down in the woods today, you’re SURE of a big surprise!” ’

I imagine the author is frantically blaming autocomplete or autocorrect, as so many other people do. Why not just switch these functions off? 

willies for wellies

Not Washed or Cooked, # 118

The Guardian’s Consumer Champions have been coining new words again:

Link: The Guardian, Consumer Champions, ‘Bosch lacks performance […]’

abouthow

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 33

Not the page’s only example of this familiar mangle, accompanied by some dubious punctuation:

Link: Michael Duffy, FirstWorldWar.com, ‘Satirical Magazines of the First World War: Punch and the Wipers Times’

it’s for its

Double-take, # 54

Like yesterday’s mangle, today’s submission, spotted in Stratford (on Avon?) by John Holloway, is also focused on crème anglaise:*

 
* Apparently the business name is not a noun-verb combination, but intended as a genitive form.
custurd

Double-take, # 53

Taking the concept of ‘mangling English’ in a slightly different direction, Just Liam tactfully identifies this submission as an item found on the menu of ‘a very respectable local hotel’:

vanilla analgise

Not Washed or Cooked, # 117

Today brings a timely reminder about the importance of spellchecking and proofreading as well as enjoying a traditional batter-based fry-up. The first example is particularly reprehensible:

Link: The John Fisher School, ‘Shove Tuesday’

To be fair, there’s no evidence that this heading was personally inserted by the head teacher, but it is blatantly clear that no-one checked the text, and (over a year later) the error remains for the world to see.

I've been slightly naughty with the second example, since it is not, as it appears to be, a complete sentence, but its accidental aptness was irresistible:

Link: Irving Bible Church, Irving, Texas

Shove Tuesday

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 32

Variations on this have been doing the rounds for a while.* None has the apostrophe that is required, but this candidate (original source unknown) wins for inserting an extraneous apostrophe elsewhere:

Without the apostrophe, ‘hearts like dogs’ can be read in at least three ways:
1) ‘hearts like dogs [do]’ (i.e., dogs have hearts and people don’t); or

2) ‘hearts [that look] like dogs’ (i.e., hearts in the shape of dogs);† or

3) ‘hearts like [they have] dogs’ (i.e., kept hearts as pets).

* Several breeds are available.
† Another occasion when I wish I could draw… If you had a heart like a dog, which breed would it be?

hearts like dogs

Not Washed or Cooked, # 116

From the ‘Note to the Reader’ accompanying a digitized archive of The Strand Magazine:

Link: Internet Archive, ‘The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly (1891—01 to 1922—12)’

adversisments

Problem punctuation, # 10

This sentence from an email shows one example of the confusion that can result from dropping the leading ‘that’ from a subordinate clause:

It is true that such omissions of the conjunction, increasingly regular in recent writing and condoned by many grammarians, are often unproblematic and unambiguous; yet widespread instances of attempts to compensate for its absence suggest that the conjunction should not be viewed as obsolete and is certainly not always unnecessary.

superfluous comma; I am afraid, there is