Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 173

Easter brings this oddity:

Link: West Tennessee Examiner, ‘Provocative and radial stage play […]’

radial for radical

Double-take, # 145

A nasty case, including singular-as-plural, a syntactical minefield, and some punctuation overkill:

Source: Rugby Observer (20 November, 2014), p. 16, and online

Are your agency […]?? [PMP Recruitment]

You Cannot Be Serious, # 42

If you’ve ever wondered how all those inked mangles arise, this is from an advertisement for a new tattoo shop in Rugby:

Source: Rugby Observer (19 March 2015), p. 3, and online

sureley, Tattoo’s & Artist’s [as plurals]; insuring for ensuring; random capitalization; punctuation problems

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 76

As Des Pond of Slough said, today’s mangle provides ‘Buckets of meaninglessness’:

Link: BBC iWonder, ‘How are serial killers caught?’ (6: ‘Debunking myths’)

Also notable is the byline, which states that the piece was not written, but ‘Authored by’ one John Bennett. The BBC’s iWonder (or, according to its logo, iW?nder) project was launched in March 2014 and was heavily trailed on BBC television. On launch day, the BBC’s internet blog explained: ‘BBC iWonder is a new factual and educational brand from the BBC, and it’s all about feeding the UK’s curiosity.’

pail into insignificance; authored by

Double-take, # 144

Des Pond of Slough spotted this amusing mangle in a BBC News breadcrumb:

Link: BBC News, ‘Apple boss Tim Cook “to donate millions” to charity’

$800 fortune

Double-take, # 143

John Holloway felt that something in the email from his solicitor was not quite right:

responaw for respondent

Double-take, # 142

This comes via John Holloway, who comments: ‘A submarine blockage or a submarine blockade?’ As often happens, it’s hard to tell whether the mangle is due to a typographical error or a genuine confusion of words:

Link: BBC iPlayer, ‘2–6 March 1915. Home Front — Omnibus’

blockage for blockade

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 77

Dr Faustus may have been left in the Royal Mail Delivery Office queue for too long:

Gertrudes letter

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 75

This is the Facebook notification of the results of an internet questionnaire, which may well have more mangles in it and can be found here:

lam of innocence

Singular or Plural? # 15

Following on nicely from Wednesday’s ill-formed and verbose headlines and yesterday’s two-nouns-with-singular-verb comes another grammatically suspect and overlong headline, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Prince Charles letters […]

A panel of seven senior judges are

Singular or Plural? # 14

John Holloway has sent in ‘a mangle from Wiltshire police’:

drinking and drug driving costs lives

You Cannot Be Serious, # 41

A new contributor, with the nom-de-mangle fellow grammar enthusiast & coffee snob, has sent this horrible headline and subhead, which only a small change in word order and/or better punctuation might have improved — and when did headings become so lengthy and detailed?

Link: The Guardian

For mentally ill too often prison means solitary, neglect, and even death || […] series of failures by authorities that are only too common