Saturday, 25 June 2016

Friday, 24 June 2016

Double-take, # 247

At a time when every online report and article must be illustrated, however unpictorial the subject, here is a recent (and mangled) attempt to represent visually the news report ‘Sheffield Posties to Go on Strike this Weekend’:

Link: The Star (Sheffield)
caption (& picture of a hand) ‘posting many letters to red british [sic] postbox on street’, illustrating postal workers strike

Thursday, 23 June 2016

Not Washed or Cooked, # 313

Someone recommended to me The Disappearance, an eight-part French thriller shown on BBC4. The subtitles came with a glaring mangle:

Epiosde

Wednesday, 22 June 2016

Double-take, # 246

What a difference a hyphen can — or would — make!

Link: North Devon Journal
Pram pushing Barnstaple mother ‘so drunk she couldn't stand’

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 232

‘CitizenChip’, who might well hide behind a pseudonym, has mistaken the prepositional verb crack down on for the noun crackdown, both of which take the preposition on, and follows this up with some dubious syntax and a typographical error:

Link: GloucestershireLive
crack down for crackdown; of for on; area for area; [syntax]

Sunday, 19 June 2016

Multimangle, # 55

Another unsolicited email, with a rather naive subject line, from the inbox of Dr Faustus:

write you; no for not; 30mins; if you have interest in know what the job entails [omitted articles; comma splices]

Saturday, 18 June 2016

Double-take, # 244

It isn’t clear whether the mangle in this breadcrumb, leading to a report whose headline uses the correct word, is typographical or grammatical, but its first word is definitely not a noun:

Link: Hereford Times, ‘Hereford Teenager Jailed for Online Sex Offences’
Teenage jailed

Friday, 17 June 2016

Double-take, # 243

A mangled headline precedes and presages further mangling. In fact, the adverb in the report’s first paragraph, flagged by red text, is included as a variant form by Merriam-Webster, though not by British-English dictionaries. The report’s second paragraph is included here only to add colour:

Link: Daily Record and Sunday Mail
Colvend women accident sets fire; accidently