Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 149

This extract contains a typographical error resulting in a very odd concept, and a spelling choice that suggests that Ilford has been relocated to the USA:

Link: Ilford Recorder, ‘Forest Gate Couple on Pedal-power Charity Trip to Paris’

The idea of vaccinating against polo is amusing here, but the error would be heinous in the context of a tragedy. The recasting of foetal (with the oe representing the ligature œ, as in fœtal) to fetal is puzzling; both Cambridge Dictionaries Online (CDO) and Merriam Webster, for instance, distinguish the spellings as British and North American variants respectively. Against the logic that suggests fetal should rhyme with metal and petal, CDO offers audio pronunciation guides in which both variants sound the first syllable as a long ‘e’. Yet altering a ligature to a plain vowel sometimes results in a shift in pronunciation, both visually and aurally distancing the word from its etymology. One example is paedophile, which in the USA is spelt pedophile and pronounced in its first syllable to rhyme with fed, not with feed.

polo for polio; fetal for foetal