Double-take, # 199

Vice Commodore Pugwash spotted this notice by a fire alarm at the Defence Academy, and is justly amazed by ‘glass which knows who is authorised to break it!’

Only authorised persons able to break glass

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 103

Dr Faustus comments: ‘I don't think I’ve ever seen this one before!’ It is an oddity indeed:

Link: BBC News, ‘“Trojan Horse”: Park View pupils “fed diet of Islam”’

The item has been tacitly rewritten since its original posting on 16 November, 2015 and the report as it now stands has clearly been much extended. While no reference to subsequent editing is made on the BBC‘s page, Newssniffer has archived an early change, together with the original report.
Mr’s Ahmed conduct

Double-take, # 198

It may resemble a plural noun, but it isn’t one… The correct word appears twice in the report:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Nearly 19,000 summons [sic] issued in Coventry […]’

summons for summonses

Not Washed or Cooked, # 271

Spotted by John Holloway. Perhaps the writer was thinking about fish…

soley

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 205

Mo Juste comments: ‘As a keen supporter of Northampton Town Football Club, I’ve been following recent developments, but it’s hard to know when the administration petition will be heard according to this headline’ — when or even whether!

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Administration petition for Northampton Town […]’

by on

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 204

Dr Faustus has found another ‘tragedy to farce’ mangle. Does it really take too long to check before posting?

Link: BBC News, ‘Swindon church service held for whale boat victims’

hot for hit

Not Washed or Cooked, # 270

Unqualified ‘quality’ further undermined by typographical error:

Link: QualitySolicitors, ‘My employer has not paid my wages – is there anything I can do?’

financil

Double-take, # 197

A humdinger of a mangle spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘Russian plane crash […]’

There are lot’s of anger

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 102

The apostrophe’s absence seems somehow worsened by the inclusion of a possessive intensifier:

Link: Halfords, ‘Winter Demister Bundle’

your vehicles own heating system

Singular or Plural? # 17

Someone in Sainsbury’s sign-writing department seems confused about grammatical number, and varying the order of the nouns doesn’t help:

chicken and beef is; beef and chicken is

Not Washed or Cooked, # 269

The final entry from Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings is the one that would probably have impressed Sartre least, since his idea is complicated enough without a careless error in its key phrase:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 16

Having said on the first day of mangles from this text that I’d given up on the book after the introduction, I’d also point out that there may be more errors in this first chapter than are documented here, as I was just skim-reading it to check whether it was suitable to recommend to students.

The responsibility for close-reading/editing, proof-reading and polishing texts for publication belongs to the author and publisher, of course; but it cannot truly be said that readers and buyers of this book have been treated with much respect by either, despite the fact that the Routledge’s website boasts the company to be ‘the world’s leading academic publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences’.

are are

Not Washed or Cooked, # 268

Still more from Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 12

chesnut tree

Not Washed or Cooked, # 267

More from Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 9

appartment

Not Washed or Cooked, # 266

Day Three of Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings offers this mangle:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 7

authoritive

Not Washed or Cooked, # 265

Another mangle from the introductory chapter of Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 7

meterological

Not Washed or Cooked, # 264

Not long ago, I overheard a couple of senior academics expressing regret that they had been unable to add a recently-published book to the reading list because, while the author’s ideas were excellent and the topic rarely addressed, the text was so filled with errors that it simply could not be recommended to students. The key problem, they agreed, was the demise of copy-editing in academic publishing houses.

This rot set in some time ago. The next few days’ mangles are devoted to the introductory chapter of a collection of Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings that I was reading — until I had to abandon it shy of page 20 — with a view to adding it to a reading list. The book, targeted specifically at students, was originally published in 2001, when spell-checkers had long been standard. Puzzlingly, the reprint of 2005 reproduced most of the errors I had found in this edition. Here is the first of them:

Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. by Stephen Priest (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 3

supression

Not Washed or Cooked, # 263

Dr Faustus points out that today’s submission is especially reprehensible because of its source: a college that specializes, according to its logo, in ‘courses in proofreading, journalism, writing and marketing’. The mangles — a misspelling and a noun pretending to be an adjective — come from its page outlining the NCTJ [National Council for the Training of Journalists] diploma:

Source: The College of Media and Publishing. ‘Do the NCTJ diploma with the experts’

receive; specialist for specialized

Not Washed or Cooked, # 262

Old Chelsea received this offer by email, and comments: ‘Honestly… Not even hidden in the small print!’ — where the word can be found several times, unmangled:

mangum for magnum

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 101

From Des Pond of Slough, a prime position for an advertisement — and its mangle:

Link: Rugby Observer (22 October, 2015), p. 1

theres

Double-take, # 196

Des Pond of Slough feels there’s some homophonous confusion here and I’m inclined to agree:

Source: ‘Great Rail Journeys — The Magic of Sicily tour’, CSMA Club Life magazine (November/December 2015, p. 89)

sight for site

Double-take, # 195

Another find by Des Pond of Slough. Hypercorrection, perhaps:

Link: Rugby Observer (22 October, 2015), p. 7

squalour

Double-take, # 194

A fishy mangle, with dreadful pun, via Des Pond of Slough:

Source: The Telegraph, breadcrumb to ‘Twitter had the best response to a lorry shedding a load of fish in Scotland’

Until I investigated this mangle, I had no idea that there was a verb shed that meant — very precisely — ‘Park (a vehicle) in a depot’, the definition given by Oxford Dictionaries. The simple past tense and the past participle of this verb are shedded. The OED* offers two definitions: the obscure (it says) ‘To roof over’, and a broader equivalent of the Oxford Dictionaries’ entry, ‘To place in a shed’.

The other verb shed, which is the one intended by The Telegraph’s breadcrumb, is irregular, and both the simple past and past participle forms are shed.

shedded for shed

* Subscription access only.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 261

This seems a novel way of avoiding the ‘i before e’ problem:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Motorist fined after council workers lifted her car onto double yellows’

recevied

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 203

Dr Faustus observed — unlike the Beeb — that this text needed proofreading:

Link: BBC News, ‘Northampton librarian praised for buying customer book’

his for this

Double-take, # 193

Mo Juste is understandably puzzled by the relation between this praise-filled TripAdvisor review and its title — and that’s before arriving at the mangle and the ambiguous final sentence:

Link: TripAdvisor, Review of Shajahan, ‘Never fails to disappoint’

Never fails to disappoint; Restuarant; The phal and vindaloo are just right if you like your spice and are not too hot

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 202

There are plenty of mangles to spot on this appallingly-produced blog, such as:

Link: Open Gate Community, Church of the Nazarene (El Paso),
Blog entry, ‘C. S. Lewis’ [sic] The Great Divorce and the Dungeon of the Mind’

Haven for Heaven; [syntax; punctuation]

You Cannot Be Serious, # 61

A hideous grammatical lapse on a page nonsensically headed ‘Security on Eurostar?’:

Link: Eurostar.com, ‘Security on Eurostar?’

We […] recommend that all valuables and important documentation is kept

Double-take, # 192

Just Liam found a multilingual mangle in Tesco, and comments: ‘Maybe they’re taking their motto of “every little helps” a bit too seriously.’ At least the noun is plural in the French version, but ‘en poudre’ implies dried into powder form (for instance, lait en poudre is powdered milk), which is clearly not the case with noodles, and where the apostrophe comes from is anyone’s guess. Then there’s the rather odd adjective beneath, whose meaning is not very clear: 

The prefix ‘un-’ (to indicate that they haven’t been) would seem more appropriate than ‘non-’; but the point is superfluous, since it seems unlikely that fried noodles could be dried.

Dried Noodle; noodles en poud’re; non-fried

Not Washed or Cooked, # 260

A week later, the mangle remains:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Experts attack claims that bacon is “as big a cancer threat as smoking”’

sausgages

Double-take, # 191

The preposition in this title is superfluous since the book (spotted in Aldi, as I recall) is about cooking for one’s friends and not, as the phrasing implies, having them round to help prepare food:

An internet trawl reveals that many compilers have use this title or some variation of it, but British-English and US-English dictionaries confirm that the verb takes a direct object.

Entertaining with Friends