Double-take, # 190

Another from Dr Faustus. The duplicated article seems to be a minor problem amidst the convoluted syntax and repetitive diction:

the the [+ repetitive/convoluted diction]

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 143

These are the opening two paragraphs from a MailOnline report:

Link: MailOnline: ‘Teenage girl, 18, racks up £1,158 phone bill […]’

The the horror of her mother

Adjectival Confusion, # 3

This piece of news (reproduced here from the Independent’s website, which is showing a video clip from London Live showing a headline from the Mail Online) is all over the media at the moment, together with its bizarre phrasing:

Link: The Independent, ‘Hacker leaks “nude photos of celebrities” — London Live’

Photographs of nude celebrities might justly cause consternation, but what is a ‘nude photo’?

nude photos of celebrities

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 93

Here’s a couple of examples of another mangle a spellchecker can’t pick up:

Link: MailOnline, ‘Attractive man wooed me […]’

Link: The Telegraph, ‘New query over HRT […]’

A staple of student essays, the error also occurs regularly in published texts, and even in writing by feminists:*

 

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Fairy tale ending’

Link: The Guardian, ‘Why is feminism still so afraid to focus on its flaws?’

* It is rare, perhaps non-existent, in the masculine variant. If you have an example, you know where to send it!

Double-take, # 21

This howler captions a photograph of Laurence Fox and Billie Piper in the ‘TV&Showbiz’ section of the MailOnline:

Link: MailOnline, ‘The final tribute […]’

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 16

This, one of several bullet points beneath a very long headline in the online Mail (11 January, 2013), has puzzled me for a while:

Link: MailOnline, ‘Solicitors “ran immigration scam […]”’

Quite apart from the fact that the formulation makes it sound as if the writer (or possibly the gang) is uncertain of the meaning of brides and husbands, the sentence is illogical since the two aren’t equivalent: brides or bridegrooms or wives or husbands, but not brides or husbands.

The fashion for newspapers to install paywalls is spreading fast, so I fear that mangles from the media may soon become rare.

Mangling Meaning, # 1

Headlines seem to have become more idiotic than ever. These are variations on a theme that featured across much of the UK media yesterday:

Link: Independent, '100 per cent'

 Link: Birmingham Post, '100 per cent'

Link: SkyNews, '100 per cent'

Link: Daily Mail, '100 per cent'

(Android edition)

Most of the offenders made matters plain (100% of the meat content) in the subheadings, but some simply compounded the idiocy:

 Link: Daily Telegraph, '100 per cent'

4News abandoned the percentages altogether:

 

 Link: 4News, '100 percent'

Since the product in question was supposed to be lasagne, you'd have thought someone would have noticed the lack of pasta, cheese and tomatoes a lot sooner.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 1

I'm trying to clear the seasonal mangles before the season ends, so here's a link the Daily Mail posted, without spellchecking or proofreading it, on the index of its website on Christmas Eve:

Oddly, the headline on the linked page was almost identical, except that it was correct:

 Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical spruce'

It's not the first time the newspaper has run an 'old, faux Christmas tree' story — complete with the same typo. Here's 2007's version:

 Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical Christmas tree'

The Mail seems to be fond of this typo. There are other headlines and links (sometimes with one or other corrected), copy and captions:

 

Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical skin'

    Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical legs'

Link: Daily Mail, 'Artifical Intelligence 1'

Link: Daily Mail, 'Artifical Intelligence 2'

 Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical flavours'

  Link: Daily Mail, 'artifical turf'

There are more… and I think we'll be meeting this one again.