Not Washed or Cooked, # 203

The John Holloway backlog continues with a typographical error (source not supplied) that would have been picked up by a spell-checking routine and/or proofreading. It‘s quite large!

venner for veneer

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 70

Another one (original source unknown) from John Holloway:

formally for formerly

Double-take, # 132

John Holloway spotted this in Tesco in Colchester:

John asks: ‘Is it “stir fries” or “stirfrys”? I feel as though it should be the former.’

Standard dictionaries don’t show a plural, which suggests that the term follows normal English rules, with one fry becoming multiple fries. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries and Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary confirm this, but all sources checked show that the term should be hyphenated: stir-fry and (where shown) stir-fries.

stir frys [noun]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 202

This mangle was found (location not supplied) by John Holloway, who comments: ‘An internet clip. I fully support the intent, of course…’

cancer awarness

Double-take, # 131

This word came into English from French and, like most loanwords from French, lost its accent. As John Holloway has discovered, Disney — or at least some franchise riding on the back of Frozen — is trying, in its own mangled way, to put it back:

Decór

Double-take, # 130

This week is largely given over to a backlog of submissions from John Holloway. Today brings a puzzling sentence in correspondence from ZestLegal:

we have returned to the examining for the necessary amendments

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 70

Mo Juste contacted me a while ago to say he’d seen a mangle in a poster advertising a particular event, but hadn’t been in a position to take a photograph. I was fairly sure that I’d be able to find the error replicated somewhere; and, in the event, deciding which of the very many examples to use was the difficult part. So, in commemoration of the famous Scots poet, and based on an idea by Mo Juste, here are some apostrophe catastrophes:

Link: TalentScotland, ‘Burn’s Night celebrations’

Link: Bedford School, ‘Burn’s Night’

Burn’s Night; Burns Night

Double-take, # 129

This seems a very odd construction to use in the context:

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘Superfit Jools eyes up 5th child’

For clarification, the article suggests that Jamie Oliver and his wife, Jools, may be considering an addition to their family. Oxford Dictionaries confirms that ‘eye up’ means ‘Look at someone in a way that reveals a particular, especially sexual, interest’; while Collins English Dictionary doesn’t offer a non-sexual variant, defining the term as: ‘to look at in a manner indicating sexual interest; ogle’ (eyes, number 40).
    Even without the sexual dimension, it would be difficult to ‘eye up’ someone who does not yet, and may never, exist.

Jools eyes up 5th child

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 69

Mangled breadcrumbs and links again; this time a persistent problem with a placename, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mountain’s name was consistently spelt correctly on the linked page, though it‘s unclear if the mangle in the links (perhaps a hypercorrection) was made by human or automatic agency:

Link: BBC News, ‘El Capitan — the world's toughest climb? in 90 seconds’

El Captain for El Capitan [a couple of times]

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 68

Another mangled breadcrumb:

The headline actually reads:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Up to 5,000 Europeans pose terror threat after going abroad to fight jihad’

which makes more sense.
post for pose

You Cannot Be Serious, # 35

This paragraph, with its dubious noun-verb agreements, shifting perspectives and overall bizarre syntax, directly quotes a person of seniority in tertiary education — Ed Byrne, the principal of King’s College London — making the case for maintaining levels of funding in tertiary education. Judging by this, it needs all the money it can get:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Labour’s tuition fee cut “would kill universities”’

 If £3,000 per student was […] one would destroy […] and one would make […]. Labour must identify clearly if […] and that university funding must not be reduced; &c

Double-take, # 128

Doesn‘t one subsume the other?

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Not on the team? Then no more sport for you’

overweight and obese

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 67

From Pop Spencer, a confusion of words, with apostrophe catastrophe:

Link: Northampton Chronicle and Echo, ‘Impromptu vigil held in Northampton […]’

affect for effect; it’s for its

Double-take, # 127

I‘ve seen several examples of these cut-off-before-the-end mangles recently. Some render the text completely meaningless; this one results in an accidental paraprosdokian:

Source: The Daily Telegraph, 15 November, 2014, p. 19

paid at least [end cut off]

Handritten, # 4

From the archive of Dr Faustus, who spotted it at a pub in Sandhurst late last year:

colesalaw

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 162

Always check the little words, for mangling them can alter meanings, create confusion and/or produce nonsense:

Link: The Guardian, ‘Ex-Sun [Sic] journalist on trial for article he didn’t write, court hears’

now for not; identify for identity

Not Washed or Cooked, # 201

A remarkably widespread, and world-wide, typographical error is represented in these two headlines. How did the writer not notice?

Link: Halesowen News, ‘Oldbury robber jailed after knife attack on firend [sic]’

Link: Ghana News — Adom Online, ‘Man kills best firend [sic] for sleeping with wife’

firend for friend

Double-take, # 126

Duplication and a slipping capital letter in this report about the dangers of drinking wine:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Drinking a glass of wine is the same as downing three shots of vodka’

duplicated paragraph & slipping ‘L’

Double-take, # 125

The use of prepositions seems fast to be growing both random and illogical, despite the fact that even quite basic dictionaries usually indicate, often with examples, which preposition to use in a verb+preposition construction. This opening sentence of a recent news item offers a bizarre concept:

Link: The Independent, ‘Israel not included in HarperCollins map […]’

Omit means leave out, so it is not only inaccurate to use the preposition in, but also both illogical and counterintuitive. Oxford Dictionaries and Cambridge Dictionaries Online, amongst others, clearly show that this verb takes the preposition from.

omitted … in

You Cannot Be Serious, # 34

Lorenzo Smerillo has contributed what he fairly describes as a ‘headacheline’:

Link: The New York Times, ‘Same-Sex Pairs in Florida Say Jubilant “I Dos” [sic]’

‘I Dos’ [as plural of ‘I do’]

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 161

Mangling at the BBC… again:

Source: BBC News for Smartphone, and online, ‘Samsung forecasts a 37% drop in quarterly profits’

manufactures for manufacturers

Not Washed or Cooked, # 200

A company that cannot correctly spell the name of the product it is marketing seldom inspires confidence in the product’s quality or the company’s competence. If the company is going to keep repeating the product’s name in an advertisement as part of its selling technique, the name needs to be correct every time. This mangle comes from my inbox:

AdStipper for AdStripper

Double-take, # 124

It is hard to tell exactly what can have happened to this supposed television programme information, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mangle here is, of course, ‘assistances’, although the whole thing turns out to be a mangle since the episode actually shown in this slot was from a much later series, in which the Avengers were John Steed and Mrs Emma Peel, not from the original 1961 series, which begins with a focus on a character called Dr David Keel, with assistance from the (definitely neither female nor plural) John Steed, who gradually takes over the lead role.

assistances for assistant/assistants

Not Washed or Cooked, # 199

Although apparently based in Costa Rica, today’s source blog is written in English. Given its subject matter, you’d have expected the writers to have had practice in spelling the main mangle here. Both errors would have been identified by a standard English spelling dictionary:

Link: Eco Preservation Society, ‘Costa Rica’s Harlequin Frog […]’

extict for extinct; florish for flourish

Not Washed or Cooked, # 198

This website seems to have had a facelift since I found today’s mangle on it, and both its site banner and its page navigation have been changed (and the latter doesn’t actually work properly any more), but the mangle remains:

Link: MathProblems.info, ‘Burried treasure problem’

I’ve linked above to the page as I found it on 10 December, 2014. For anyone wanting to find the mathematical problem, it is number 149 in the index.

burried for buried

Not Washed or Cooked, # 197

From last month’s news:

Link: The Greeneville Sun, ‘Former Tobacco Warehouse Leveled In Early-A.M. Balze [sic]’

A similar typographical error lurks here, in a news item from 2013:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Firefighters tackle 'volcano' balze [sic] as mulch fire burns in Maryland’

balze for blaze

Not Washed or Cooked, # 196

Two versions of a mangled breadcrumb that appeared on the Guardian’s webpages last week:

attle for battle

Not Washed or Cooked, # 195

This breadcrumb was doing the rounds on Facebook last autumn:

Source: breadcrumb link to Latin Times, ‘Is Drinking Wine Better Than Going To The Gym? […]’

cmplex

Double-take, # 123

This mangle is surprisingly widespread and comes in at least these two variants, but there may be more. The first example is the more common error:

Link: NorthPole.com, Craft Cottage, ‘Poke a Dot Luminaries’

The second is less common, but not hard to find:

Link: Volcom.com, ‘Poker Dot Gloves’

The Oxford English Dictionary shows a pronunciation difference between UK- and US-English:

Spelling errors are thus more likely to be American. The term must, of course, be taught. If the l is not sounded, the correct spelling cannot be deduced from the sound; nor can it be inferred through logic, for, as the Online Etymology Dictionary points out, the connection between polka dots and the polka is arbitrary: the dance was popular and it became fashionable to append the name randomly.

An American company produces a series of ‘Poke-a-Dot’ books, intended to teach counting to young children:

Link: InnovativeKids, Our Products, ‘Poke-A-Dot’

The series title is a great pun; but a pun can be fun and effective only if it is understood as a pun. In practice, this series title is likely to consolidate the misspelling, and it is not impossible that the title is itself based on a misunderstanding of the term.

poke-a-dot; poker dot

You Cannot Be Serious, # 33

Sometimes mangles appear in the supermarket queue next to me, as recently happened in Lidl… This mangle seems to arise from misunderstanding the name of the second added ingredient:

Peach and Passion. Fruit Yoghurt

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 160

Beginning the year as we mean to go on with this mangle, spotted by Des Pond of Slough, who comments: ‘I wonder just how thrilled she is…’

Source: BBC homepage (http://www.bbc.co.uk/), 31 December, 2014

The caption in the box above also seems to be missing some vital punctuation…
Dam Joan Collins