Double-take, # 198

It may resemble a plural noun, but it isn’t one… The correct word appears twice in the report:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Nearly 19,000 summons [sic] issued in Coventry […]’

summons for summonses

Not Washed or Cooked, # 249

Another unchecked typographical error, spotted by Kieron Hayes:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Sent From Coventry: The album that charted city's hidden music scene’

luminaires for luminaries

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 185

The writer of this piece starts by insulting anyone who obtained a degree at one of Coventry’s two universities more than a decade ago by entitling his article ‘Ten things you couldn’t do in Coventry ten years ago’ and then heading the first of his offerings ‘Get a first-rate education’. The text in this section goes on to mangle a key word and to use both a singular and a plural verb form with the same subject, as well as adopting a repetitive narrative formula:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Ten things you couldn’t do in Coventry ten years ago’

Unviersity; University of Warwick keeps; University of Warwick are

Mangling Meaning, # 25

This is another example of yesterday’s mangle, this time preceded by some confusing syntax:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Coventry pensioner conned out of cash in bogus lottery scam’

Ambiguity results from the omission of the conjunction that, which would indicate both the start of the subordinate clause and its relation to the main clause, and its replacement with inaccurate and inadequate punctuation. These errors mean that the ground is not prepared for the rest of the sentence, and indeed make it seem at first that the Trading Standards spokeswoman is replying to the correspondence. The omission of the conjunction also means that it is unclear whether the section beginning ‘victims’ is correctly shown as reported speech (Morgan said [that] victims), or actually direct speech that lacks quotation marks (Morgan said: ‘Victims’), which is underlined by the use of the same term, said, to introduce both direct and indirect speech. The whole is nonsensically laid out in paragraphs made of short, single sentences, producing a disjointed style that does not aid comprehension.

syntax [missing that = ambiguity]; paragraphing; sucker’s list

Double-take, # 116

A missed-out word results in gibberish:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘The £65m cuts no-one in Coventry will be able to escape’

to hurt almost single person

Double-take, # 71

Something missing here?

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘Biggest ever cannabis factories found in Coventry and Warwickshire’

not the only found in

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

Mangling Meaning, # 6

This piece from last Saturday's online Coventry Telegraph rather needed some grammar, punctuation, editing and proofreading. It's not clear whether (or how much of) the mangling is original to the quotation or as filtered by the writer…

 Link: Coventry Telegraph, 'Families furious after double yellow lines painted outside homes'