Problem punctuation, # 6

A piece in the Education and Family section of the BBC News website offers a variety of methods of concluding direct speech, only one of which is correct:

Link: BBC News, ‘Learn 1,000 words in a new language urges campaign’

The report’s title (shown in the above link) seems sparsely punctuated too. Is the BBC cutting back on commas?

Double-take, # 20

In context, the closing words in the extract below are puzzling:

Link: The Independent, ‘Male sexist gorilla […]’

Other females?

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 24

The logical continuation of yesterday’s problematic principles for principals is, of course, principals for principles. Here is a lovely example from an academic text:

Beverly M. Black and Arlene N. Weisz, ‘Effective Interventions with Dating Violence and Domestic Violence’, in The School Services Sourcebook: A Guide for School-based Professionals, ed. by Cynthia Franklin, Mary Beth Harris, Paula Allen-Meares (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 519–28 (p. 522). Link: GoogleBooks. The same editorial team included this essay, with the error corrected, in The School Practitioner's Concise Companion to Preventing Violence and Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 127–39 (p. 132). Link: GoogleBooks.

Today’s second mangle is taken from promotional material advertising a book called Bottom Line Focus by one Marty Harshberger (available from his website Bottom Line Coach, which offers a fair selection of mangles), and you’ll note it has brought a friend:

Link: bottomlinecoach.com, Bottom Line Focus

If I were to compile a Mangles of the Year list, I’m fairly sure ‘lawsuites’ would appear in the top three… Bliss!

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 23

Amongst his recent submissions, Dr Faustus, who has kept us entertained all week, sent in a screenshot of a (locked) webpage describing a module offered by the University of Warwick. The page is rather generously supplied with errors, so I thought we might focus on the one that made Dr Faustus most annoyed. It’s another of those pesky homophones that arise fairly often on the Mangling English blog:

Other departments offer this error to the general public. This example is particularly reprehensible, given that the correct word is shown in the category bar on the left:

Link: University of Warwick, School of Life Sciences, ‘LF301 – Bacteria: Genes to Behaviour’

The erroneous usage of principle for principal turns out to be appallingly common on official university webpages. Try looking through the results of an Internet search, such as the one shown below, based on a set search term (“principle aims of”) that is unlikely ever to be correct:*

Link: Google search on ‘“principle aims of” module university’

You would also think that a librarian would know the difference:

Link: University of Texas Digital Repository, Dorothy Ledbetter Hall, ‘Balancing Accountability and Ethics: A Case Study of An Elementary School Principle’

The abstract supplied on the page uses the correct word five times, and it also appears in the appended list of subject index terms. It is, of course, correct on the title page of the dissertation:

Link: University of Texas Digital Repository, Dorothy Ledbetter Hall, ‘Balancing Accountability and Ethics: A Case Study of An Elementary School Principle’ (pdf dissertation)

It isn’t just universities. This head teacher, for instance, has hedged his bets:

Link: LinkedIn, Matt Brandl (Morton Middle school principle)

The problem is found in other professional contexts too. Headline writers at the Vancouver Sun should surely know better:

Link: Vancouver Sun, ‘Heather Ogden […] principle dancer […]’

Nicely doubled up there for emphasis… but perhaps they were dutifully copying what they had been given by performance arts agencies, some of which also have trouble with the term:

Link: Gala Entertainment Management, ‘Nicole, Dancer, aerialist’

Link: MSA (McDonald/Selznick Associates), ‘Brittanie Brant’

The error can be found on websites promoting performances too. This one, from the cast page of a site advertising an impending tour of an Irish dancing show, also includes a couple of catastrophic apostrophes:

Link: Essence of Fire

The final two examples tidily bring us back to the beginning of this mangle by joining performance arts and universities. This is from website of the State University of New York:

 Link: SUNY Fredonia, Faculty at School of Music, biography of Shinobu Takagi

Finally, the University of East Anglia offers another singer, together with a nasty grammatical slip:**

Link: University of East Anglia, School of Music, biography of Hannah Francis

It’s good to know that there are so many principles out there. What a shame so many have nothing to do with good writing and presentation… and no guesses for what tomorrow’s mangle will be.

* If anyone can think of a context in which it would be correct, please let me know and I'll happily amend the page accordingly.

** As the Oxford Dictionaries entry confirms, the simple past form of the verb sing is sang, not sung, which is the past participle.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 85

This example, from Dr Faustus, comes from a BBC News report that demonstrates several of the ways in which supposedly professional writers can turn tragedy into bathos garnished with unintended and inappropriate humour.

The extract comes from the iPad edition, but this version of the report can also be found online, having been reproduced verbatim (and thus without checking) by 24AllNews. This sentence would benefit from being completely reworked; as it stands, it should have been checked for accuracy before posting and needed better punctuation: 

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 22

Day 3 of Dr Faustus Week features an offer emailed by Time Out:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 62

Dr Faustus offers a ‘hideous mangle from the Faculty of English at Cambridge, no less...’:

Link: University of Cambridge, English Faculty News, ‘Macfarlane Shortlisted for Warwick Prize’

Dr Faustus continues: ‘“Warwick” spelt correctly in the bulletin’s headline, but not in the copy: go figure.’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 61

Someone has been busy finding mangles… This is Dr Faustus Week, which begins with this extract — apologies for the hideous colour scheme:

Oddly, the rest of the list does seem to have been properly checked…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 60

This book was featured last Thursday, with a suggestion that it might reappear… Here are two more ouch-inducing moments:

 Diane Capri, Due Justice (Boise, ID: Stonegate, 2012. Previously published as Carly’s Conspiracy), p. 95. Link: Amazon.co.uk

 Diane Capri, Due Justice p. 119.

The Author’s Note contains a surprising statement:

 Diane Capri, Due Justice p. 312.

It’s not entirely obvious what heavily might mean in the context, but apparently it isn’t intended to equate to effectively, accurately or soundly. The born should not have made it through proofreading, and the tewnty suggests that the text hasn’t been through a spell-checker ― a process that a reader might fairly expect will occur before publication…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 59

From a letter issued by a university in the UK:

The extract supplies sufficient material for the potentially contentious split infinitive to be overlooked on this occasion. The failure to carry out spell-checking and proofreading is augmented by a failure to hyphenate, so that the final sentence gives the impression that it is the employee’s car, rather than the employee, that must be entered into the scheme.

Mangling Meaning, # 23

This is the opening sentence of a report published by The Northampton Herald & Post last weekend:

Link: The Northampton Herald & Post, ‘Spooky clown mystery grips Northampton’*

Presumably residents lolling around in pyjamas and sans maquillage have been left alone.

* The report is illustrated. Presumably, although the picture is not credited, the photograph was taken by a quick-thinking resident of Northampton.

Mangling Meaning, # 22

This won’t, I’m afraid, be the last time we see this text. It’s one of the few occasions I’ve wished I could draw so as to be able to illustrate a mangle:

Diane Capri, Due Justice (Boise, ID: Stonegate, 2012. Previously published as Carly’s Conspiracy). Link: Amazon.co.uk

What is a suitable prize to give a fish?

Not Washed or Cooked, # 58

This gem appeared in a piece about summarizing classic books for the Twitter age:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Classic books in 140 characters’

The error has now been corrected, probably because so many commentators mentioned it. (On this topic, it’s notable that edits are not logged on Telegraph webpages: only the original publication data are shown. This makes a nonsense of comments relating to errors that are subsequently corrected.)

Double-take, # 19

Something crucial is missing from this advertisement, reproduced here in full:

 

Rugby Observer, 12 September, 2013, p. 11. Link: Rugby Observer

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 19

Why?

Why apostrophize just one? Why pluralize some and not others? Aaargh!

Not Washed or Cooked, # 57

I hate to criticize people raising money for charity* ―

― but if you type the first placename shown into Google, it not only autocorrects the misspelling, but even assumes you might be interested in the names of both places and shows the right form of each, so there’s no excuse:

Link: Google search ‘Johno’Grotes’

* The information was on one of Waitrose’s ‘Community Matters’ boxes, which accept tokens given to customers who spend a certain amount, and Mangling English’s token went in this one…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 56

These beauties are extracted from a form letter (submitted to the blog anonymously) sent or given to ‘jobseekers’ signed up to a ‘Refresh’ course offered by A4e, a private company. Since the letter refers to sending feedback back to an individual’s ‘Jobcentre Adviser’, the course may well be in receipt of government funding. Its header states that it offers the long-term unemployed ‘advice’, ‘skills’ and ‘support’, and the course includes formal training in ‘CV and letter writing’… 

These extracts, however, suggest that A4e needs help with its own letter-writing skills, notably in grammar, proofreading, and constructing coherent clauses:

Do you have any closed relatives?

Mangling Meaning, # 21

The final day (this time round) of things that don’t really say what they mean, or perhaps don’t mean what they say, is this headline, which seems to sum up the broad situation accurately, if also both accidentally and unfortunately:

Link: Great Yarmouth Mercury 24, ‘Norfolk and Suffolk Memory Joggers […]’

That ‘people and dementia patients’ says it all…

Mangling Meaning, # 20

Day 3 of things that don’t really say what they mean, or perhaps don’t mean what they say, brings a sign on display at the Caludon Centre at University Hospital, Coventry:

The contributor, Krissie Pearse, comments: ‘The other adult entrance hasn’t been here as long.’

I’ve been looking at it on and off for a few days now, and I still can’t imagine the situation, or subsequent conversation,* that resulted in the sign being requisitioned…

* Though I think one of the participating voices must have belonged to Bob Newhart.

Mangling Meaning, # 19

Another in the short season of things that don’t really say what they mean, or perhaps don’t mean what they say, is this one, presently displayed in Waitrose, Daventry:

I’ve seen many examples of stop used where prevent is meant, but save for prevent (or possibly for stop) is a new one on me.

Mangling Meaning, # 18

A short season of things that don’t really say what they mean, or perhaps don’t mean what they say, begins today with this contribution from Gary Hazell:

Mangling Meaning, # 17

This is the Android version of another BBC item that was published without adequate proofreading:

It was subsequently corrected on the webpage, but not until it had been disseminated widely across the long-memoried and unforgiving Internet…

Double-take, # 18

Available in Morrisons (sic) now:

It’s no secret that this sprout variety was named after the city, whose official website confirms how to spell its name in case anyone’s in doubt:

Link: City of Brussels

Now for a change of direction; but as we’re here I thought I'd share my surprise in discovering that the city has decided to use an automatic translator instead of a bilingual human being to render its pages into English. Disclaimers on every page make the potential problems clear and there is some odd phrasing:

Link: City of Brussels, ‘Municipal news’

The headline (quoted in the link below) isn’t quite right, but full marks to the programmer for correctly treating a range introduced by the preposition between:

Link: City of Brussels, ‘Traffic congestion by Balloon’s Day Parade’

which should, of course, be complemented by the conjunction and, not the illogical duplicate preposition to or the equally illogical (since it represents to) dash…

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 21

Des Pond of Slough has submitted this Tweet, which is accidentally about selling bicycles…

Link: Twitter, Warwickshire Police, SNT Rugby Town North

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 84

This sublime contribution was supplied by Des Pond of Slough. The mangle occurs in the final paragraph reproduced, but inlcusion inclusion (see yesterday’s mangle) of the apostrophe-free name of this distance-learning institute was irresistible:

Link: The Writers Bureau (sic), ‘How Much can I Earn as a Proofreader?’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 55

Today, a few examples of a rather common error, which should be flagged by any spell-checker and/or be picked up easily when proofreading.

The first is from the digital version of 2013 Songwriter’s Market:*

Link: Google Books: 2013 Songwriter’s Market

This one is from a page about available ‘Massachusetts Elementary and Secondary Education Data’ on the MassLegal Services website, and also includes ― or should that be inlcudes? ― a mangled and:

Link: MassLegal Services, ‘Massachusetts Elementary and Secondary Education Data’

The others are both from The Telegraph:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Bright young things with nowhere to shine’

Link: The Telegraph, ‘US banks attack Europe’s “Tobin Tax”’

Researching this, I came upon a rather jolly blog called Typo of the Day for Librarians, which sadly seems not to have been updated recently, but which covered today’s mangle, and further variants, on 30 July, 2008 and 20 March, 2013.

* Edited by Roseann Biederman. Blue Ash, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2012. The error appears on p. 186 of the printed version.

Mangling Meaning, # 16

The omission of a comma here changes the intended meaning entirely:

The full stop shows that the version above (recorded on 27 August 2013, at 10.32) was treated as a complete sentence. The current version (which shows a date-stamp timed some half-hour earlier) is presented as part of a more complex sentence, but the crucial comma is still missing:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Spanish Gibraltar “invasion” fake pictures spark fury’