Not Washed or Cooked, # 84

Some of the inputters seem to have had problems with this address:

Link: Google Maps search for ‘riverside medical clinic london’

Double-take, # 32

Old Chelsea came across this business card, which certainly contains some interesting phrasing:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 97

Available from Wilkinson:

Link: Wilko Meadow Diner Plate

Apparently for use in professional establishments only.

Double-take, # 31

Animals seem to be causing confusion at the moment. Yesterday, it was piglets and lambs. Today brings an image published on Political Scrapbook a while ago, flagging a new topic thread on the site:

Double-take, # 30

Bob Godiva has sent in this odd juxtaposition:

I’m not entirely sure where he found this version (nor why newborn is treated as two words). The product is available on Amazon, but the display on a PC browser is laid out differently, and offers an explanatory notice (with newborn as one word):

Link: Amazon.co.uk, ‘Furreal Friends New Born Piglet’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 96

Today, we return to Due Justice, a novel which has featured twice this year (on 19 September and 22 September) and whose Author’s Note, you may remember, suggests that the text has undergone a rigorous editing and proofing exercise. The first extract offers two mangles (or three, if you feel that the final sentence should be preceded by a comma, rather than a full stop; or several if you think the overall syntax is problematic):

Diane Capri, Due Justice (Boise, ID: Stonegate, 2012. Previously published as Carly’s Conspiracy), p. 210.
Link: Amazon.co.uk, LookInside

The second contains only one mangle, but it is a good one:

Diane Capri, Due Justice, p. 228

Double-take, # 29

The propensity for writers to begin sentences with qualifiers and subclauses, coupled with a lack of  lexical precision, sometimes leads to some odd propositions:

A. J. Braun, The Man With No Name, vol. 1: The Baby Hunters (A. J. Braun, 2013), chapter 1, paragraph 8.
Link: Amazon.co.uk, LookInside

The kitten referred to was Cat, not, as the construction ‘As a kitten, I […]’ suggests, the speaker. The speaker is a man, the Man With No Name of the title. He was never a kitten.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 83

This heading from the Canadian Huffington Post

Link: The Huffington Post — Canada, ‘A Rain Storm of Good and Bad News for Global Markets’

seems to be caught between markets and meerkats. Use a spellchecker — simples!

Not Washed or Cooked, # 82

‘The Official BBC News Youtube Channel’: inaugurated on 1 November 2013, and still not corrected:

Link: ‘The Official BBC News Youtube Channel’

If you made it up, no-one would believe you…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 81

More evidence that The Telegraph’s finance and business writers can’t spell, and can’t or won’t use a spellchecker:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Fitch threatens to strip America of “AAA” credit rating’

Odd that ‘ceiling’ is right…

Double-take, # 28

It helps to know what the writer is talking about to make sense of this, but even without background knowledge the missing word is clearly an issue:

Muh Arif Rokhman, ‘Rereading Barthes’ Reading Method: Comparing French and Indonesian/British Cases’, Humaniora, 18 (2006), 246-53 (p. 247)

It’s not, as it actually says, a reference to a picture saluting a flag, or even, just as surrealistically, to a flag saluting a picture (a picture-saluting French flag?), but refers to Roland Barthes’s discussion of the signification of a photograph of a black soldier on the cover (below) of the magazine Paris Match.

See ‘Le Mythe aujourd’hui’, in Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957, pp. 179–233; trans. by Annette Lavers, ‘Myth Today’, in Mythologies. Rev. edn. London: Vintage, 2009, pp. 131–87.  Link: Wikipedia, ‘Paris Match - child soldier cover.jpg’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 80

From the catalogue of the Library at the University of Warwick:

Link: University of Warwick Library, Classic Catalogue

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 95

Yesterday, ‘a “small ladies handbag”’. Today:

Source: Gemma Halliday, Viva Las Vegas (eBook edn © 2010, published in What Happens in Vegas). Link: Amazon.co.uk

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 94

More article/noun mismatches, today from the world of clothing. This one comes from a blog:

Link: Katy Werlin, ‘Head to Toe: A 14th Century Woman’, The Fashion Historian (10 March, 2011)*

This unintentionally humorous description is from an article in The Telegraph, but seems to be quoted from a press release:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Ryanair: extra baggage and lower charges herald customer-friendly upgrade’

* The statement is factually as well as grammatically mangled. Amongst other authorities, Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane observe that ‘[b]raies […] were worn exclusively by men’ (Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 41).

Not Washed or Cooked, # 79

How can you not notice this?

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Troublehsooter […]’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 93

Here’s a couple of examples of another mangle a spellchecker can’t pick up:

Link: MailOnline, ‘Attractive man wooed me […]’

Link: The Telegraph, ‘New query over HRT […]’

A staple of student essays, the error also occurs regularly in published texts, and even in writing by feminists:*

 

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Fairy tale ending’

Link: The Guardian, ‘Why is feminism still so afraid to focus on its flaws?’

* It is rare, perhaps non-existent, in the masculine variant. If you have an example, you know where to send it!

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 92

Not sure where Bob Godiva found this one, but it definitely deserves an ouch award:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 91

A few examples of yet another problem that will not be picked up by a spellchecker:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘11 ways to protect your privacy on Facebook’

Link: BBC News, ‘Beer taste excites male brain’

Source: Sky onscreen television schedule

Not Washed or Cooked, # 78

A failure to spellcheck or proofread, augumented by pronoun-induced ambiguity:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Forced marriage to be a crime’

Multimangle, # 3

The first paragraph needed spellchecking and/or proofreading, and there are several confusing shifts between singular and plural forms in the last two paragraphs:

Link: The Times (subscription only), ‘Retired police dogs to get ‘“state pensions”’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 77

Des Pond of Slough grabbed this screenshot just in time; the mangle was swiftly corrected:

Link: BBC News, ‘In Pictures Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ (image 5)

collosal spider

Not Washed or Cooked, # 76

Yet another variant in the ‘i before e’ category:

Link: The Rugby Observer, 20 June, 2013, p. 7

Not Washed or Cooked, # 75

Another Grauniad special:

Link: The Guardian,’Sex-selective abortion allegations unprovable, says top prosecutor’

Double-take, # 27

There seems to be something important missing from this subheading:

Link (subscription access only): The Times, Troubleshooter (24 July, 2010), ‘Tax on draughty’

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 25

I’ve noticed that Dr Faustus has a soft spot for apostrophe catastrophes. He sent this one in last month, commenting on both the error and the inconsistency of presentation:

Link: Warwick District Council, ‘Whats On’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 74

Offering a pleasing segue from yesterday’s focal word, this page spells accommodation correctly (in the main text, if not, in fact, in its URL), but displays problems elsewhere, such as the penultimate sentence here:

Link: Abant İzzet Baysal Üniversitesi, Campus Accommodation

The page’s closing sentence needed spell-checking too:

I shan’t engage with the various grammatical issues, because they aren’t mangles in the same sense as they would be for a writer whose first language was English. However, this is not to say that it’s acceptable for a professional website to contain errors, and not using a spell-checker is inexcusable. 

Not Washed or Cooked, # 73

There are many further variations on today’s mangle (I haven’t included verb forms, for one matter), but here’s a representative sample.

This is a rather unfortunate juxtaposition on the website of ACODE (the Australasian Council on Open, Distance and E-Learning):

Link: ACODE, ‘Acomodation ACODE 62’*

The University of Birmingham’s website has a page offering information about an EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) conference:

Link: University of Birmingham, EMBO Conference 2014, ‘The Mighty Daphnia: Past Present and Future’‡

Here’s the BBC, offering helpful information for those attending its 2013 Winter Good Food Show:

Link: BBC Good Food Show Winter, ‘Acommodation’

It’s not just the consonants that cause confusion:

Link: Reed.co.uk, ‘Chef De Partie Luxury Hotel with accommadation’

Link (secure page): Facebook | iQStudents; cf. Google Search ‘iQ Sheffield Student Accommadation’

You’d think an estate agent would have a better grip on the word:

Link: Zoopla via The Telegraph, ‘2 bedroom terraced house for sale’

Finally, a contribution from The Grauniad:

Link: The Guardian | Travel | Brussels

* There’s a different misspelling on the conference’s ‘Getting to Suva’ page.
‡ The title lacks any punctuation on the homepage of the conference and contains only one capital letter.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 74

One of those words you particularly don’t want to mangle:

Link: Amazon.co.uk, entry for Peter Jones, Homer’s ‘Odyssey’: A Companion to the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore. Classics Companions (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1991)

Not Washed or Cooked, # 72

Dr Faustus has been emailed a special offer with a bonus mangle. It’s a brand-new way to deal with that old i before e problem:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 90

Today features an extremely common mangle. The examples are all taken from professional sources.

The first can be found on the website of a self-improvement community, which also seems challenged by a lack of hyphens:

Link: SelfGrowth.com, ‘Mange Your Time More Effectively […]’

The next one comes from the English-language website of a high school in Manila, and provides an image of the the correctly-spelt book cover. The screenshot includes, in the column on the right, a bonus it’s-not-phrased-as-a-question-but-we’ll-give-it-a-question-mark-and-that’ll-sort-it heading:

Link: Ateneo High School Educational Media Center, OPAC, Ronald R. Fry, Mange Your Time [sic]

This one, which also comes with a second mangle, is extracted from a page of details about ‘Priority Management programs’ offered by a bilingual training company based in Montreal:

Link: Z Solutions Consulting, ‘Plan’

There are variations on the theme. This is from the digital TransWorld Business Magazine:

Link: TransWorld Business Magazine, ‘10 Effective Time Mangement Skills’

 You can mange things other than time, of course. People, for instance:

Link: HotCourses, ‘People Mangement — New to Management’ at Newbury College

You can mange an office, or help mange one:

Link: Reed.co.uk, ‘Office Manger’ vacancy

Link: LinkedIn, ‘Assistant Office Manger’ vacancy

You can specialize:

Link: RigZone, ‘Topsides Logistics Mangement Lead’ vacancy

Or you can break into marketing, starting as an assistant —

Link: Marketing Week, online jobs, ‘Assistant Brand Manger’ vacancy

— and working up to become the subject of an article in a trade publication: 

Link: Checkout, ‘Rogers Appointed Brand Manger […]’

You can be trained for a career:

Link: UCAS Progress website, ‘Level 3 Extended Diploma in Horse Mangement’ course

However, since the term mange exists (it is a skin disease afflicting animals, such as horses and dogs), if your work is connected with animals it’s wise to take particular care with words, perhaps checking a dictionary as well as a spell-checker, and looking at any further information that might help, such as the spelling on a logo: 

Link: China Working Dog Mangement Association website

Link: China Working Dog Mangement Association website, English pages