Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 159

This blissful mangle comes via Ryan McCarthy:

Source: Philip’s World Atlas, 2006 Edition (London: Philip’s, 2005), p. 48

As Ryan says, ‘Who knew a book could be frightened?’

Koran, the scared book of the Muslims

You Cannot Be Serious, # 32

Today, crass thoughtlessness brings inappropriate humour to a tragedy’s anniversary:

Link: Twitter, BBC News, ‘Before and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami’

before and after [but showing after and before]

Double-take, # 122

This mathematical mangle in the order form insert of December’s Simply Entertainment catalogue was spotted by the eagle-eyed Des Pond of Slough:

125th anniversary of Noel Coward’s birth (on 16 December 1899)

Not Washed or Cooked, # 194

Another seasonal mangle (now corrected):

Link: Heronswood Primary School, Kidderminster, Events Calendar, ‘Cinderella Panomime [sic]’

Panomime

Not Washed or Cooked, # 193

Katerina Orlandi-Fantini spotted, on a newspaper’s Facebook feed page, this mangled breadcrumb echoing an error in the picture caption on the main website. At least ‘Boxing Day’ is spelt correctly:

Link: Facebook, Nottingham Post, ‘Nottignhamshire [sic] walks on Boxing Day’.
Cf. Nottingham Post, ‘Nottinghamshire walks on Boxing Day’

Nottignhamshire

Not Washed or Cooked, # 192

Another seasonal mangle:

Link: Manchester Evening News, ‘Dry Boxng [sic] Day for some after water supply loss’

Boxng Day

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 158

Possibly spell-checked, but not proofread, and certainly not cross-checked with the album cover:

Link: CDBaby, The Press Gang, The Holy [sic] and the Ivy

The mangle is repeated in the track listing further down the same webpage:

Merry Christmas, mangle-spotters!

The Holy and the Ivy

Not Washed or Cooked, # 191

The last of the ‘Christams’ run today (but seasonal mangles will continue through the week), and, as promised, the last culprits are the most heinous… These are a few of the many examples out there.

Link: South Pasadena United Methodist Church, ‘Christams [sic] Eve Candlelight Service’

The icing on the cake is the juxtaposition of the mangle and the church’s motto.

Here’s another mangled service announcement:

Link: Shepherd of the Hills Church, Omaha, ‘Christams [sic] Eve Candlelight Service’ (pdf)

Finally, from a giftshop:

Link: Coventry Cathedral’s Online Shop, ‘Ceramic Christams [sic] Ball’

Christams [sic] balls all round, really!
Christams [selection]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 190

Today’s seasonal mangles demonstrate a heinous lack of care in the world of education, and cover all levels. The first, pre-school, ‘Christams’ example has brought several friends:

Link: Busy Bees, Manchester — Fallowfield,  ‘Decorate a Christams [sic] bauble’

In addition to the hideous apostrophe catastrophes and other mangles is the header’s odd-sounding ‘Established since 1983’, which should read ‘Established in 1983’ or simply ‘Established 1983’.

We now move on from nursery to primary school:

Link: Hodthorpe Primary School, Worksop,  ‘Christams [sic] Concerts’

Link: Bowerhill Primary School, Melksham, ‘Santa’s Christams [sic] Sparkle Disco’

Here‘s the heading of a secondary school’s seasonally-themed homework exercise, nicely mangled by a teacher:

Link: Tiverton High School, ‘A Christams [sic] Carol — images’

Finally, a mangle from a university whose close traditional links with the service in question should have given it much practice in spelling ‘Christmas’ (and also in capitalizing titles correctly):

Link: King’s College Cambridge, Choir Recordings, ‘Nine Lessons and Carols (2012)’

Christams [selection]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 189

Today brings examples from business and journalism. First, an event entry on a parking reservation website:

Link: ParkMe, ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas [sic] Parking’

The large-font mangle recurs in the heading of an article published in November 2012, whose error remains uncorrected:

Link: Express, ‘Christams [sic] cards from Prince Charles and Princess Diana up for auction’

Christams parking; Christams cards

Not Washed or Cooked, # 188

Today, some ‘Christams’ meals. Given how early restaurants plan and publish their seasonal menus, you'd think someone would have expunged these mangles by now:

Link: The Duke of Cumberland, Brampton, Cumbria, ‘Christams [sic] Party Menu’

Link: The Dog & Fox, Wimbledon, Longdon, ‘Christams [sic] Buffet Menu’ (pdf file)

Link: The Gatehouse Hotel, Ipswich, ‘Christams [sic] Fayre Lunch’

Christams meals

Not Washed or Cooked, # 187

Creativity is clearly important to this publication. Here, it’s practising creative spelling:

Link: Nubi Magazine, ‘Top 5 Hottest Christmas Party Dresses For 2014’

The mangle has now been corrected, but its memory remains in the page’s address as a reminder that old sins have long shadows on the internet: http://www.nubimagazine.com/top-5-hottest-christams-party-dresses-2014/.

Christams Party Dresses

Not Washed or Cooked, # 186

Mangle-eyed readers will have noticed that, ‘the festive season’ being upon us, the blog has already featured a couple of Christmas-based mangles, and for the next week or so will focus on the seasonal theme.

In 2012, we had fun with various manglings of Santa and Claus, while 2013 was mainly concerned with mangles in Christmas songs. (These are all available in the blog’s archive.) This year, there’s a single mangle, but presented in increasingly appalling settings.

Today‘s spelling mangle, from the website of the Mattapoisett Historical Society in Massachusetts, is supported by a failure-to-hyphenate —

Link: Mattapoisett Historical Society, Events, ‘Drop In Christams Craft’

— that makes it seem at first to be reporting on a reduction in those making items associated with the season.

Drop In Christams

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 157

A cover of that perennial Cliff Richard Christmas favourite…

Link: AllMusic.com, Various Artists, Just Like Cliff Richard.
Cf. VirginMedia, Just Like Cliff Richard,Various Artists

I shan‘t even begin to consider why anyone would feel the need to record and release a slew of tracks apparently in the style of (‘just like’) Cliff Richard when all the tracks can be easily obtained in a recording by someone you’ve heard of, i.e. the actual Cliff Richard.

‘Mistletoe and Wind’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 185

Dr Faustus sends this, commenting: ‘Spotted on the back of my Cadbury’s advent calendar…’

Oxford Dictionaries observes, under woolly, ‘US also wooly’, although Merriam Webster tucks this alternative far down the page under ‘Variants of WOOLLY: wool·ly also wooly or wool·ie’, which expresses its existence while supplying little authority for its usage as correct.

wooly

Double-take, # 121

Dr Faustus has sent in this staff circular from the Co-op:

hard work work

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 66

Phil Vivian submitted this, remarking: ‘Thought you might appreciate this mangle, from the cover of a recent Bournemouth Echo property supplement. Not sure that I’d enjoy the neighbours if what is claimed is true.’

envious estate; 1930s character home

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 69

From the backlog of apostrophe catastrophes, here’s one Dr Faustus found in Vox in October:

Source: Smartphone. Also online

it’s for its

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 68

The cover of the November/December Village Emporium features a seasonal dropped apostrophe, with each edition offering a different finish:

Seasons Greetings

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 67

Spotted by Des Pond of Slough, this advertisement for The Old Plough, Braunston, provides a variety pack of apostrophe catastrophes:

Source: The Village Emporium, Borders edition, September/October 2014, p. 30

You will search in vain for a note connected to the asterisk…
fish n chips; Pensioners portion; hand cut chips; pie’s and pudding’s

Double-take, # 120

Submitted by John Holloway (and a little later by Kieron Hayes), this is one of many questionnaires doing the rounds online, and here appears with the mangled Facebook wrapper:

As John points out, ‘Intelligence quotas are not percentages — and as for “your’s”!’
IQ 187%; your’s

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 156

Via Dr Faustus. I didn’t ask where he found it, but it’s from a mock GCSE paper:

what does the Kalahari expedition offers

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 66

Here, on Mangling English’s birthday, a double-whammy apostrophe catastrophe —

Source: The Rugby Register, North & Villages edition, December 2014, p. 14, and online.
Cf. South and Central edition, p. 29, and online

— is supported by a failure to hyphenate ‘lead-up’ and some question-mark overkill. Pictured is the face of the mangle-spotter on spotting the mangles.

tip‘s; lead up; ???

Right word, wrong form, # 4

This mangle can be found on an Australian video available on Facebook:

Link: Facebook, Sea FM Hobart, ‘Depressed goat […]’

Mangle aside, the film tells a heart-warming story; it’s worth watching if you like goats, donkeys, animals-in-general, stories-with-happy-endings or some combination of the above.

laid for lay

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 155

This mangle was submitted some time ago by Dr Faustus:

Link: Official London Theatre, ‘Hampstead Theatre streams Drawing the Line’

Variations on the theme of streaming occur correctly on ten occasions in the report; but it needed a final proofread before posting.

steaming for streaming

Double-take, # 119

This product-name mangle dates back to the end of July, so I imagine it’s too late to snaffle the bargain:

Source: Rugby Observer, 31 July 2014, p. 44, and online

I initially assumed that the mangle had arisen because the drink had ceased to be made and long been forgotten, but it turns out that Babycham celebrated sixty years of manufacture last year. If you want to know what a Baby cham (or ‘baby cham’) glass looks like, there’s a picture in the BBC report on the anniversary.

baby cham

Not Washed or Cooked, # 184

This mangle comes from a blog entry on a website whose title seems to be missing a necessary apostrophe:

Link: The Creators Project [sic], ‘24-Hour Online Cat TV […]’

It’s not clear whether this is a typographical error or a mondegreen. Either way, the writer has not run the text through a spell-checker or consulted a dictionary.

Admist for amidst; Creators Project

Multimangle, # 12

This sentence from a report in the Telegraph quickly degenerates into gibberish:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Zinc not Vitamin C is best for fighting colds’

In addition to omitting ‘were‘, the writer has committed a tautology by leading into the quotation with both a that and a colon.

The quotation itself is rather odd: what on earth is ‘biblical’ intended to convey here, and why are medical researchers using such a non-scientific and contextually meaningless term (and in a scientific journal: the original source is cited as The Canadian Medical Association Journal)?

Although the studies carried out on children; concluded that: ; ‘no biblical reason’

Double-take, # 118

Spotted in the Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, area by Mo Juste: 

Mo Juste comments: ‘Unfortunately it doesn’t have a company name, but obviously someone’s paid a fair bit of money to have it done.’ (One would hope not, given the mixture of font faces: some of the ls have serifs, but others don’t.) Mo even checked online in case someone had set up a company called Ulimited. The lack of company name or contact details does seem to be a bit of a problem if the plan is to persuade people to sign up; while ‘5Giga data’ seems to be a form of mondegreen.

Ulimited calls. Ulimited text.5Giga data

Not Washed or Cooked, # 183

Another from Dr Faustus, this seems include all necessary details:

World Gold Counsil

Double-take, # 117

This, the opening paragraph of a BBC report from last month, comes via Dr Faustus:

Source: BBC News for smartphone; and online: BBC News, ‘Terror suspect Abu Rumaysah leaves UK despite ban’

being banned him

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 65

Singer-songwriter Ian Bourne posted to Facebook this extract from an unsolicited invitation he’d been sent, and kindly agreed to let me use it on the blog:

The first paragraph’s apostrophe catastrophe has a stylistically and grammatically dubious set of supporters, notably the arbitrary and sometimes bizarre capitalization throughout the text, the odd use of inverted commas in the second paragraph, and the multiple exclamation marks after ‘NOW’.

haven’t; random capitalization; our ‘one time’ registration

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 64

Following on from last Thursday’s heinous mangle in which a Rugby librarian had copied a book’s title, but added an apostrophe, here’s the Simply Entertainment cataloguer copying a programme title, but excising the apostrophe clearly and correctly shown on the DVD box:

Source: Simply Entertainment, August 2014, p. 40

Devils Whore

Double-take, # 116

A missed-out word results in gibberish:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘The £65m cuts no-one in Coventry will be able to escape’

to hurt almost single person

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 63

Des Pond of Slough finds a hideous mangle in the window of Rugby Library:

Coal Merchant’s of Rugby

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 62

A governmental object lesson in why English teaching needs to be improved:

Link: Twitter, DCMS

your businesses broadband

Not Washed or Cooked, # 182

Kicking off Mangling English’s Christmas is this gem from Phil Vivian, who comments: ‘My good deed for the day: pointing out to the supervisor in Tesco that they might not sell too many of these. That said, I suppose that they could be targeting a very specific type of customer, perhaps one contemplating marriage with a pre-nuptial agreement as part of the deal.’

financee

Not Washed or Cooked, # 181

This can presently be seen among similar (if unmangled) home-produced announcements decorating the shopfront of a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine in South Kensington:

specilise