Double-take, # 156

Adding insult to injury, this is extracted from a letter sent by Lloyds Bank announcing a drop in the interest rate with a solecism resulting from omitting the word ‘account’:

eSavings is changing

Double-take, # 155

The inclusion of a few relative pronouns and some hyphens would mean that this piece of text could be grasped in a single reading:

Link: The Independent, ‘Soldiers told to move their wedding so Obama can play golf’

AP reports the White House sources said they were unaware the couple had been told they should relocate; no on the record comment

Double-take, # 154

Takeaway has long been accepted as a compound, so it now looks strange as separate words; but it’s the attraction of the telephone that’s the puzzle here:

Link: The Rugby Observer, 20 December, 2014, p. 8, and online

bookings for telephone; take away

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 83

This comes from Dr Faustus:

dont for don’t

Now Try It In English, # 5

Another from the inbox of Dr Faustus, and presumably based on the council’s template for calls to interview. Note that the ‘person to ask for’ was edited out, and is not an omission:

Test will be required to undertake on the day

Double-take, # 153

A caption spotted by Just Nick, featuring one mangle and a humorous ambiguity:

Link: BBC News, ‘The man who cut out his own appendix’

relaxing with one [of] Antarctica’s best known inhabitants [presumably the penguin]

Now Try It In English, # 4

While we’re on the subject of scam emails (see yesterday), try this one:

your cognizance is in great necessity

Double-take, # 152

This appeared in my inbox last week:

a render; Seniour

Mangling Meaning, # 32

Omitted pronoun results in ambiguity:

Link: The Times, ‘Lecturer wins £100,000 in costs and damages after being deceived over child’

his former wife and former boyfriend

Multimangle, # 18

Many mangles in a couple of short paragraphs, via Just Nick:

Link: PinkNews, ‘Comment: My afternoon at a “gay cure” conference in London’

it for is; random commas; missing relative pronouns; that’s for that

Handritten, # 5

Spotted by Just Nick in Royal Leamington Spa:

Alcohol off liecense

Not Washed or Cooked, # 230

Just Nick has found a messy sentence in a BBC report (now partly corrected):

Link: BBC News, ‘Plucking hairs “can make more grow”’

What the findings means for people plucking their eyebrows is uncertains

Not Washed or Cooked, # 229

Another from Just Nick:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Russell Brand abandons anti-voting stance and says “vote Green”’

suport

Not Washed or Cooked, # 228

As Just Nick observed, there‘s been no spell-checking here (though the error was corrected sometime after 10 May):

Link: BBC News, ‘Tobacco display ban extended to all shops’

accross

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 82

Another Time Out offers mangle from the inbox of Dr Faustus:

ENOs for ENO’s

Mangling Meaning, # 31

Going the rounds on social media (but original source unknown) is this assembly of mangled syntax and grammar, which, in nonsensically separating its prepositional ‘but’ from the clause it is supposed to qualify with end of sentence punctuation, manages to compromise its own point:

nonsensical ‘But’ starts sentence; changed for has changed; punctuation…

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 78

This error, found by Dr Faustus, comes from an online article written by a self-declared ‘dyslexic’ journalist, who is a graduate of the Teeline shorthand method. Laudable though her efforts are and encouraging as she is as a model for other students, whether or nor dyslectic, it remains a fact that writers — including, and in some cases especially, journalists — need to communicate their message clearly and accurately, which means using the correct words. While corrections and advice should be offered with care and sensitivity, it is not polite, kind or helpful to let people use words incorrectly, especially if their work takes them into the public forum where their errors are likely to reflect badly upon their abilities:

Link: Journalism.co.uk, ‘A guide to mastering 100wpm shorthand’

illicit for elicit; dyslexic

Multimangle, # 17

Let‘s hope that Dr Faustus chooses to study shorthand elsewhere — for this college‘s sake!

Incidentally, this is only a selection from the full range of mangles available on the website…

PA’s; administators; accurtae; theat for that

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 180

As Dr Faustus investigated shorthand further, he discovered some useful, if mangled, advice:

Link: Ford Improved Shorthand™

Of course, the guidance is flawed as well as mangled: someone who can ‘ready’ it is likely to have seen the suggestion too, and will simply seek the second sentence…

ready for read

Multimangle, # 16

The rest of this week belongs to Dr Faustus, who is having to work much harder than he‘d imagined in his search for a shorthand system and (coming soon) a credible and creditable shorthand school.

Here‘s ‘[a]mbitious journalism student, Alex Cooper, introduc[ing] us to Teeline Shorthand with his debut guest post for Bad Language’ — Bad Language being ‘The Articulate Marketing Blog’, a blog on the website of Articulate__Inbound Content Marketing [sic]. Or is it Alex Cooper? Confusingly, the post is headed ‘How to write faster — learn Teeline shorthand By Matthew Stibbe’. Blame for the many mangles is thus not easy to apportion:

Link: Articulate__Inbound Content Marketing, ‘How to write faster – learn Teeline shorthand’

stream line; langauge; principal for principle

Not Washed or Cooked, # 227

From Dr Faustus comes this mangle taken from a report that is generally very badly constructed (the subheading and first paragraph are virtually identical, for instance), and which was obviously neither spell-checked nor proofread:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Grooveshark shuts down following “very serious mistakes”’

failuring

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 179

Another mangle that a spell-checker can’t identify:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Amazon scraps free delivery under £20 (except for books)’

double for doubled

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 81

Spotted by John Holloway, one missing apostrophe (and arguably a missing hyphen), plus another that’s strictly correct though unusual, since business convention usually ignores it:

boatings best kept secrets

Now Try It In English, # 3

From the email (and backlog) of Dr Faustus:

your account has been disabled considered a problem […] please follow the stages of being able to return to your account […] Shopping worldwide hassle free […]. Please follow the steps To Update Your account limited now

Double-take, # 151

This was spotted by John Holloway at Torpoint Yacht Harbour in Cornwall:

Perhaps the writer was a fan of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard.
hazzard for hazard

Not Washed or Cooked, # 226

Not the most effective of translations (now corrected):*

Link: The Guardian, ‘Music rules the airwaves as French radio journalists’ strike stretches on’

it for her; puppel for puppet

* The original speech is quoted in full in Le Monde, ‘Radio France: “Ils jouent avec votre radio, notre avenir”’.

Double-take, # 150

Dr Faustus has found another of those annoying online quizzes. This one professes to test grammar via multiple choice answers, but sometimes there are no right answers to select:

Link: What-Character-Are-You.com, ‘How good is your grammar?’

[multiple choice with no right answer

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 77

Another pesky homophone — twice! — and the film title’s article seems to have fallen off too:

May the Forth

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 178

Media Twitter feeds — unsurprisingly — regularly feature mangles, such as this one:

Link: Guardian Twitter feed

spark for park

Mangling Meaning, # 30

One from John Holloway. He didn’t say where he found it, but he did comment: ‘Preposition errors can make SUCH a difference to the meaning!’

coming at my home

Double-take, # 149

Before-and-after shots of the Post Office website failing to include the required information in the information box, and instead suggesting the impossible:

Link: Post Office Money®, ‘Reward Saver FAQs’

no information in information box