Not Washed or Cooked, # 286

Bob Godiva received this in his inbox:

protal for portal

Mangling Meaning, # 24

I’m not sure where Bob Godiva found this (and he was slightly cagey when I enquired), but it’s a princely example of obfuscation:

school free drug zone

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 42

Submitted by Bob Godiva, and presumably the error of the journalist taking down spoken comments:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Do you know what you’re eating?’

donor kebabs

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 100

Another from the eagle-eyed Bob Godiva:

Link: QuickMeme, ‘While Their Kids Sleep […]’

In fact, Mr Godiva had to alert me to the error (and it isn’t clear why the parents don’t rate an initial capital either), as I was so busy looking at what the parents had done that I entirely missed what was in the heading. Well worth a look.

Double-take, # 30

Bob Godiva has sent in this odd juxtaposition:

I’m not entirely sure where he found this version (nor why newborn is treated as two words). The product is available on Amazon, but the display on a PC browser is laid out differently, and offers an explanatory notice (with newborn as one word):

Link: Amazon.co.uk, ‘Furreal Friends New Born Piglet’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 92

Not sure where Bob Godiva found this one, but it definitely deserves an ouch award:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 69

Another from Bob Godiva:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 88

Bob Godiva has submitted possibly the most extreme example (swiftly corrected) we’ve had of why proofreading is important:

It’s not clear why the designer was so determined to keep repeating the product description, but it really emphasizes the error.

Double-take, # 4

Bob Godiva has contributed this barely credible example of Chrome shooting itself in the foot (which I've edited slightly so the text can be seen more easily):

Late last month, in the Google Chrome Blog, someone styling herself 'Rachel Petterson, Software Engineer and Savvy Speller' announced the browser's new spell-checking tool. The post's URL and title make it clear that the misspelling is deliberate:

Link: Google Chrome Blog, 'Bettar spell chek in Chrome'

The Chrome team clearly assumes that users of its browser will instantly understand 'bettar spell chek' as intentional and that they all have a similar sense of humour.* However, various comments across the Internet show that not everyone does appreciate that these 'errors' are deliberate and/or intended to be amusing. Some people have castigated Chrome for carelessness. Some noticed only the 'bettar', not the 'chek', and thus didn't realize it was deliberate. In one exchange on a Google productforums page last Wednesday, someone promised to pass a user's irate complaint 'onto the correct team', and thus appeared to be a Google employee who had missed the point.‡

Unsurprisingly, the joke doesn't travel very well across cultures. Although Petterson's announcement specifically refers to support for non-English languages, the Chrome team seems unaware of the inherent issues in dealing with a multinational audience: for instance, you have to be fairly advanced in a foreign language to recognize and appreciate grammatical jokes.

Perhaps it would have been more obvious had the Chrome team misspelt spell as well; but, in the context of the widespread laxity in spelling and presentation on and off the Internet, the tag simply seems ill-judged.

* Also perhaps that they will avidly be reading every blog post ― who has the time?

‡ An exchange on a different Google productforums page two days later suggests that he has had it explained it to him and been put in charge of explaining it to other people…

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 6

Bob Godiva contributed today's mangle, which had done the rounds in 2007 from the point of view of its unfortunate ambiguity, although no-one seems to have considered its appalling grammar or how that added to the ambiguity problem:

It's an issue that appears to arise with the informal, but sadly ubiquitous, term kids,* as this example from the bet-hedging Walmart rather emphasizes:

 Link: Walmart, kid's or kids'?

The term children, conversely, can be given a possessive apostrophe easily and accurately, as shown on the Constructive Playthings website:

Perhaps Kohl's, whose name suggests appreciation of the importance of apostrophes, should have chosen the more formal term in order to avoid inconsistency, a grammatical error and, given the grammatical issues, what turns into a potentially ambiguous statement:‡

Link: Kohl's, 'kids clothes'

Many, many more examples exist…

 * The OED finds this term in use in English as early as 1642, and notes that it was 'Originally low slang, but by the 19th c. frequent in familiar speech'. In the early nineteenth century, it was also used 'In low sporting or criminal circles [as a] term of admiration for an expert young thief, pugilist, etc.' In the UK, goat occurs in various metaphors, most of which relate to being foolish or behaving foolishly, which makes the ubiquity of kids even more puzzling.

‡ Let's ignore the syntactical illogicality of the product-type listing beneath 'expect great things'. 

Note: since the starting point, Target, is a firm operating in the USA, all of today's examples come from North American sources. This is not to say that firms in the United Kingdom or in other English-speaking places couldn't easily supply examples just as good/bad…

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 39

Bob Godiva has sent in this little gem, from the back of Browns* in Coventry:

* Sic, before anyone says anything! Whatever the Coventry Telegraph might write in its headline and story (and, indeed, might justifiably suppose to be correct), the picture of the bar it has published shows no apostrophe.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 10

In addition to the early-Lent mangles Lent (see the entries for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week), this month offer other opportunities. This one is courtesy of Bob Godiva:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 28

Bob Godiva sent me a link to a recent report on the so-called 'bedroom tax', which suggests that the occupancy required is even higher than previously reported:

  Link: 4News, 'Bed tax'

Are they rationing commas at 4News?

It turned out, however, that I hadn't read far enough down the page… It was this that Bob's eagle eye had spotted:

Link: 4News, 'Bed tax'

Bob Godiva wants to know: Who is Hugh demand?

 

You Cannot Be Serious, # 6

Today's contribution, courtesy of Bob Godiva, suggests that sponsorship can be a dangerous thing:

You need really good, clear diction for this one…

Here's the online version, where the illustration sports an unlikely caption, perhaps written tongue in cheek:

Link: Fair City News, Cox Sucker Days

Sadly, like so many of the best things in life, this turns out to be a mirage: as you've probably already guessed, Fair City News is, of course, a spoof publication (and well worth a look).