Not Washed or Cooked, # 245

This, sent in by Des Pond of Slough, is extracted from a membership-benefits advertisement featured in the club magazine of the Civil Service Motoring Association (CSMA). The mangle (whose correct form can be found in UK-English spell-checkers in standard applications such as WordPerfect and Word) occurs among the postcards, although arguably the text beneath requires a hyphen:

Source: CSMA, Club Life, July-August, 2015, p. 70

Madiera

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 86

Another from Suzanne Sirett. It isn’t clear from the report whether the text was supplied as a written or spoken quotation, so there’s a choice over where the mangle originates:

Link: ABC News, ‘Andrew Laming's senior media adviser, Fiona Edwards, defects to Labor’

indiscrete for indiscreet

Double-take, # 171

This seems an unlikely term to apply to quantities of liquid, and indeed rather evokes soggy bread:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Cookbook of the week: Luke’s Cookbook by Luke Thomas’ — Pea and Goat’s Cheese Risotto

Add the hot stock in three batches

Not Washed or Cooked, # 244

A Russell Group university offering a mangled service to its graduands/graduates and their guests during graduation week:

shutlebus

Multimangle, # 22

Two clippings from one page of a small commercial website, spotted by Snazz. The first offers two versions of a word, misspelt both times, and the second contains several minor mangles and a sen­tence that displays more passion than intelligibility:

Link: Atelier Garden Studios, ‘Vista Garden Studios’

 

panneling; pannelling; Whats more, our time honoured precision engineering skills, respect & nurture -these materials, resulting in a garden studio which blends with nature to become indoors and outdoor in one space.-

Not Washed or Cooked, # 243

Other available languages include English:

Link: Languatics, French

couses for courses

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 85

Suzanne Sirett found this mangle on the Facebook page of ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Cor­por­a­tion. The corresponding webpage has been corrected, but the second graphic below (a screenshot of the top result from an Internet search) shows that the error was originally there. It is difficult to tell whether the mangle is a typographical error or an eggcorn:

Link: Facebook, ABC News, post of 14 July, 2015, at 11.44

Source: Google search on "Protestor Helen Bayes told the ABC they were baring", 14 July, 13:02

baring witness

Double-take, # 170

Dr Faustus has found a big white space and a forgotten placeholder on a global publishers’ graduate recruitment page. Recruitment is now closed, but if the page is to remain in place for reference, it would look better with the gap filled or removed:

Link: HarperCollins Publishers, Graduate Recruitment 2015-2016

Long Tail Video goes here

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 190

This typological mangle has featured before, also in an academic publishing source. This example is both quite large and thus obvious, and pleasingly juxtaposed with the even larger correct version:

Link: JSTOR, The French Review, preview page of Valerie Raoul, ‘The Diary Novel: Model and Meaning in La Nausée’

dairy for diary

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 84

It’s hard to tell whether this error is the journalist’s or the bank’s, although surely the former should have corrected it anyway. Since t and p are not adjacent on the keyboard, it’s probably not a typographical error, and is more likely to be a mondegreen or eggcorn since, when sounded with a glottal stop, the wrong word can barely, if at all, be distinguished from the correct word. Similar errors in published writing and in students’ written work suggest that this is becoming an increasingly common problem.

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘Scandal of the missing cash from dormant RBS account’

upmost for utmost

Not Washed or Cooked, # 242

A barely subliminal secondary message may be embedded here — or perhaps it’s just a mangle:

destory for destroy

You Cannot Be Serious, # 48

An oddly-phrased report link which a small amount of reordering could improve:

Breadcrumb link to The Telegraph, ‘Striking ferry workers mutiny on ship and loot bar over job losses’

Striking […] workers mutiny by […] spraying graffiti over job losses

Problem punctuation, # 12

Gary Hazell is uncertain whether or not this is a good price:

Link: Facebook page for Westmead Garage, Swindon

£150,00

Not Washed or Cooked, # 241

Most well-known place names can be found in the spelling dictionaries of standard word processors when set to the appropriate location, and spell-checkers are also available for databases, so there is no excuse for this mangle which turned up in a set of directions on the AA’s online route-finder. It was spelt correctly (‘Nuneaton’ if you’re unfamiliar with the name) in the rest of the directions:

Link: AA Route Planner (journey from Wibtoft, Lutterworth to CV10 7DJ, Nuneaton)

Nuenaton

You Cannot Be Serious, # 47

The prospect of free pudding tempted me into completing a feedback form. Sadly, the voucher had too short a use-by date and was not transferable, but I was rewarded with a mangle:

would you choose to dine at if not at [BRAND]?

Mangling Meaning, # 33

Is this ambiguity, redundancy or plain confusion in a promotional email from TomTom? Des Pond of Slough wonders: ‘Does “at once” mean immediately or simultaneously here? Is it “quickly” or “multiple” that is being rendered superfluous?’ 

quickly charge multiple devices at once

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 83

Another of those pesky homophones, perhaps a hangover from the recent general election. The tone and lexis here suggest that The Independent, once a credible broadsheet, is close to completing its transformation into a tabloid, though the report does appear in a section called ‘Weird news’:

Link: The Independent, ‘Man arrested for “kidnapping” his own son […]’

canvass for canvas

Double-take, # 169

Not a mangle so much as an oddity, certainly for those with any knowledge of Ancient Greece, and in context rather an inappropriate usage (which has been widely replicated on the Internet):

Link: BBC News, ‘Greece debt crisis: Eurozone summit strikes deal’

As Des Pond of Slough says, ‘I wonder.how many of the reporters describing Greek “marathon” talks appreciate its origins.’
marathon talks in Brussels [on Greek financial crisis]

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 86

Dr Faustus is still receiving mangled email employment alerts from Unitemps. This one takes the catastrophic apostrophe to a new nadir:

Physic’s

Not Washed or Cooked, # 240

Unchecked mangling, spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: University of Kent, Department of French, Professor Philip Robinson

righteenth

Double-take, # 168

Clare Selley has been exploring York, where she was quite taken aback by this sign:

butiq for boutique

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 82

Dr Faustus has come upon this erroneous word before in formal literature on journalism courses. This version, on the right, comes with some clunky syntax and bad punctuation, on the left, and can be found in a study programme issued by The National Council for the Training of Journalists:

Link: NCTJ.com, ‘NQJ News Report – Programme of Study 2014-15’

Although the NCTJ is a British association, the document also uses practice as a verb throughout. It appears that at least some of the many mangles of British journalism are actually being taught…

effects for affects; practice for practise

Not Washed or Cooked, # 239

This mangle (in only the third paragraph of the article) leaps out at the reader, but not, it seems, at the writer:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘The UK’s obsession with cheap pasta sauces is causing a food crisis in Italy’

restauarant

Not Washed or Cooked, # 238

A couple of examples of a phrase that Google shows to be very frequently mangled. Here‘s a course in Wales:

Link: Merthyr Tydfil College, ‘A Level Travel and Toursim’

Here is a whole college devoted to the subject:

Link: Google Sites, Why Travel and Tourism, ‘Canadian Toursim College’

Finally, from a formal publication, a variant that turns out not to be a one-off error:

Link: Google search "International Business and Toursim Society"

Google searches show that a surprising number of people on Linkedin are affiliated to this society or have done courses, including university degrees, in related subjects…

toursim for tourism

Double-take, # 167

Just Liam is understandably puzzled by the use of the verb in this newspaper placard in York:

The idea of spontaneity, which requires the construction ‘catches fire’, seems here to have been confused with the idea of agency, ‘is set on fire’. Oxford Dictionaries (fire, 11) confirms that the use of ‘set’ in relation to ‘fire’ needs both a specific preposition and an object, either in the form of ‘set fire to something’ or ‘set something on fire’.

The publication that issued the placard is simply called The Press. The wording is not replicated at the top of the online story, where there is no headline at all, but instead a rather odd and archaic sweep of key points (with rather odd and archaic random capitalization) separated by dashes:

Link: The Press, ‘Bus fire in York […]’

bus engine sets on fire

Not Washed or Cooked, # 237

As Dr Faustus has discovered, UCL — that’s University College London — has apparently dispensed with both spell-checking and proofreading in its email communications to its customers, resulting, here at least, in some frankly embarrassing mangles of words and punctuation. These emails both relate to the same ‘purchase’ or ‘order’, which is actually a booking, and it is notable that only one bothers with a salutation:

approriate; furture reference; details of your query quoting

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 189

A fairly common typographical error, here from a BBC News report and spotted (some time ago) by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘Pimlico stabbing prompts murder inquiry’

though for thought

Double-take, # 166

This is extracted from a genuine Google email, and is a useful reminder that a spell-checker can check only the accuracy of spelling, not the accuracy of content:

[email of 24/06/15 advertising Father’s Day offer ending 21/06/15]

Double-take, # 165

If you have to explain it, the analogy is surely pointless…

Link: Rugby Observer, 4 June, 2015, p. 17

extinct dodo

Double-take, # 164

There are times when it is perfectly correct to place commas around further information. This is not one of them:

Link: The Guardian, ‘First crop of £9,000 tuition fee-paying UK graduates “more focused on pay”’

The adjectival clause (or adjective clause) that provides details about timing and fees in the subheading is intended to qualify the subject noun ‘graduates’, but notably this information relates only to students who began their courses in 2012, and not to any others. The information is thus limited, making this an essential adjectival clause, which should not be separated by commas. As it stands, the comma separation incorrectly extends the focus from a specific group of graduates — the 2012 student intake — to all graduates, which is nonsensical since earlier students were not paying fees at the stated rate. (It might also be noted that, as many have yet to go through the formal graduation process, they are probably still graduands, rather than graduates, a distinction the education-minded Guardian should know.)

An essential (or a defining or restrictive) adjectival clause contains crucial information about the subject, without which the whole point is lost. Conversely, an adjectival clause that offers further details that are not necessary to understanding the central point is called non-essential (or non-defining or non-restrictive). This additional information, which can be removed without affecting the meaning of the sentence, should be placed within a pair of commas.

A detailed explanation of these clauses and their uses can be found on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online website. More succinct explanations and examples are offered by The Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (note that in US-English the hyphenated descriptors, ‘non-essential’ and so on, become compounds: ‘nonessential’), and also the German website englisch-hilfen.de, which offers some useful observations on correct and colloquial usage.

essential adjectival clause punctuated as non-essential

Double-take, # 163

Just Liam spotted this at the Coventry Pride event last weekend:

missing punctuation; visit this lady, she will reveal all