The Wrong Word Entirely, # 110

This mangle, spotted by Dr Faustus, has now been corrected:

Link: BBC News, ‘Alton Towers Smiler Ride Reopens Nine Months After Horror Crash’

insure for ensure

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 105

The writer knows what the right word is, as it appears in the final paragraph here, but the word used in second paragraph makes little sense, as Dr Faustus observes. There’s a hyphen missing too:

Link: BBC News, ‘Britons with “wrong passport” stopped from travelling to US’

biometric trip [for chip]; old style passport

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 103

Dr Faustus is unimpressed by what he calls an ‘insensitive mangle’ (though the insensitivity arguably begins with the headline, and ‘insensitive’ seems too generous a term):

Link: BBC News, ‘Memorial Service for Ben Nevis Death Climber Tim Newton’

exhibitions for expeditions

Mangling Meaning, # 38

Via Dr Faustus, meaning is much mangled by a failure (throughout the report) to use the required initial capital letter for the adjective. The odd punctuation in the opening sentence is a bonus:

Link: BBC News

catholic for Catholic; Chief Constable, George Hamilton, says

You Cannot Be Serious, # 63

Dr Faustus thinks this may be less money than it looks:

Link: BBC News, NI’s top lawyer to join “gay cake” case’

£500 pounds

Mangling Meaning, # 36

Dr Faustus has submitted this snapshot from a BBC report which has since been much (and tacitly) rewritten. (The original text is reproduced verbatim here and elsewhere online.) In the second paragraph here, further comments from an expert previously quoted are reported very badly, and the punctuation seems to have been inserted at random:

Link: BBC News, ‘How low can the oil price go – and what is the impact?’

He adds that a great level of unrest might add a geopolitical unrest – and consequent worries about supplies – might push prices higher. But not by much, he says.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 226

From Dr Faustus comes this slip on the keyboard, preceded by some exceedingly bad syntax:

Link: BBC News, ‘La Familia Mexican drug cartel founder killed’

tears for years; the Christian military order of the Middle Ages of the same name

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 103

Dr Faustus comments: ‘I don't think I’ve ever seen this one before!’ It is an oddity indeed:

Link: BBC News, ‘“Trojan Horse”: Park View pupils “fed diet of Islam”’

The item has been tacitly rewritten since its original posting on 16 November, 2015 and the report as it now stands has clearly been much extended. While no reference to subsequent editing is made on the BBC‘s page, Newssniffer has archived an early change, together with the original report.
Mr’s Ahmed conduct

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 204

Dr Faustus has found another ‘tragedy to farce’ mangle. Does it really take too long to check before posting?

Link: BBC News, ‘Swindon church service held for whale boat victims’

hot for hit

Double-take, # 197

A humdinger of a mangle spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘Russian plane crash […]’

There are lot’s of anger

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 200

Stilted syntax and a mangle, spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘China shares fall more than 8% on growth concerns’

The mangled verb was subsequently changed — unfortunately to the simple present ‘saw’ rather than the past perfect (or pluperfect) ‘had seen’ that the context‘s temporal logic requires, and which seemed to be what the writer had originally intended.

seen for hd seen [+saw for had seen]

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 195

Fairly hot on the heels of a contribution by Dr Faustus, demonstrating a failure to proofread a report of a tragedy before uploading, comes a BBC News breadcrumb, via Des Pond of Slough, featuring the same basic typographical error:

The phrase is correct in the main report, but this may, of course, have been altered.

casual for causal

You Cannot Be Serious, # 50

More from Dr Faustus, who observed a problem with a preposition in this so-called ‘analysis’, by a ‘business correspondent’, of the Bank of England’s accidentally leaked plan to prepare an emergency strategy to leave the European Union. Prepositions, however, appear to be of lesser concern than the overall expression. Much of this ponderously whimsical piece of writing demonstrates problems in selecting logical and harmonious verb forms, while the second paragraph seems confused about whether it is asking or reporting a question:

Link: BBC News, ‘Email mistake reveals Bank of England's EU exit project’

logic & harmony of tenses; First of all we’d ask why do we pay these people to react rather than pre-empt massive outcomes. Secondly it might have already been too late; [&c]

You Cannot Be Serious, # 49

Dr Faustus observes that the BBC seems to be suffering from inconsistency in relation to a company name in this report, shifting between plain and possessive forms (the latter being incorrect). I’m inclined to add, forty-two years on from the UK joining the EEC and twenty-two years into its EU membership, that it is high time the British press learned that the final letter of Nestlé takes an acute accent — if other nations’ print and web media can accommodate diacritical marks, why can‘t the UK’s? Most companies, these two included, have an Internet presence nowadays, so there can be no excuse for not checking and using their correct names. There’s also a typographical error resulting in the wrong word (which a spell-checker wouldn’t find, but proofreading would, or should). Yet another mangle here is the omission of a possessive in the first line of the second paragraph, which refers specifically to the opinion of the presiding (and correctly unhyphenated) advocate general (compare ‘the judge’s opinion’ rather than ‘the judge opinion’) and not, as it is made to seem here, a particular kind of general opinion:

Link: BBC News, ‘Nestle faces setback in KitKat trademark battle’

Cadbury & Cadbury’s; Nestle; advocate-general opinion

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 189

A fairly common typographical error, here from a BBC News report and spotted (some time ago) by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘Pimlico stabbing prompts murder inquiry’

though for thought

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 181

Ryan McCarthy spotted a typographical error (now corrected) in this caption:

Link: BBC News, ‘How my father gave me a terrifying lesson at 10’

Minters for Miners

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

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 79

Yesterday’s missing apostrophe may have ended up here, in a mangle spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

Link: BBC News, ‘Charge over Coventry police car brick attack’

due before Coventry Magistrates’ on 28 May

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 78

From a smartphone BBC News report comes a missing apostrophe, and a puzzle: why use single quotation marks in the headline and doubles in the subhead? The online version has no subhead, but it too nonsensically varies its quotation marks with singles in the headline and doubles in the body of the piece…

Source: BBC News for smartphone

pounds worth + interchangeable single & double quotation marks

Double-take, # 144

Des Pond of Slough spotted this amusing mangle in a BBC News breadcrumb:

Link: BBC News, ‘Apple boss Tim Cook “to donate millions” to charity’

$800 fortune