Double-take, # 242

As Mo Juste points out, ‘This does rather sound like a large and dangerous bag is at large.’ It is hard to see how the bag is significant enough to feature in the headline at all, much less in prime position (it appears near the end of the report, as part of a description of the miscreant), but, as it stands, a hyphen might improve matters:

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo

Hessian bag carrying man sexually assaulted woman

You Cannot Be Serious, # 73

From Mo Juste, who comments: ‘It looks like part of the old game show — “rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying”.’

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo

Northampton to restoration of the monarchy in 1660 with Oak Apple Day service

Not Washed or Cooked, # 302

Via Mo Juste, this is not a rarely-mangled word, but the form of the mangle is uncommon:

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Werid Menagerie of Impossible on Stage’

Werid for weird

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 95

I’ve saved this recent submission from Mo Juste for the anniversary of the last time he sent in an example of what may be the mangle that most annoys him:

Link: Udiscover, ‘The Godfathers of British Blues’

Mo Juste comments: ‘I can see that you’d write “You shouldn’t underestimate what Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner…”, but surely “It’s impossible to overestimate what Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner…” is what the writer meant.’

underestimate for overestimate

Multimangle, # 39

Today’s contributor, Mo Juste, comments: ‘A friend posted this on Facebook recommending anyone going into Northampton General Hospital to go for the Halal menu (and quite rightly so).’

fedding for feeding; commas for heftier punctuation; only […] only; general syntax

Double-take, # 209

This comes from Mo Juste:

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Historic tree stolen […]’

He comments: ‘The tree, apparently, has a circumference of 4 feet, which would make it about 15 inches in diameter. Accordingly this would mean the front door in the photograph must be about 6 inches wide.’

mathematical mangle: circumference of 4 feet = about 15 inches in diameter = front door must be about 6 inches wide

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 205

Mo Juste comments: ‘As a keen supporter of Northampton Town Football Club, I’ve been following recent developments, but it’s hard to know when the administration petition will be heard according to this headline’ — when or even whether!

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Administration petition for Northampton Town […]’

by on

Double-take, # 193

Mo Juste is understandably puzzled by the relation between this praise-filled TripAdvisor review and its title — and that’s before arriving at the mangle and the ambiguous final sentence:

Link: TripAdvisor, Review of Shajahan, ‘Never fails to disappoint’

Never fails to disappoint; Restuarant; The phal and vindaloo are just right if you like your spice and are not too hot

You Cannot Be Serious, # 45

Mo Juste was trying to research famous birthdays for 27 May, and he came upon this:

Link: The Famous People, Famous People Born On May 27th

Mo Juste was surprised. He hadn’t realized that what Wikipedia describes as an ‘English comedian and television personality’ was in fact an American film producer who had died in 1999, and he was sure that the English celebrity spelt his forename with only one ‘l’.

Further investigation revealed that someone had mixed up the English Alan (one-ell) Carr with the American Allan (two-ells) Carr, famous for the film Grease:

Link: Aveleyman, Allan Carr

Mo Juste clicked the link, and discovered that the erroneous photograph is credited to a Twitter account (a bit of a clue there, one would think) called ‘Chattyman’ (another clue since Alan Carr: Chatty Man is the name of Alan (one-ell) Carr’s chat show):

Link: The Famous People | Film & Theater Personalities | Allan Carr — Biography

All in all, an own-goal for The Famous People — Society for Recognition of Famous People.
Alan Carr’s picture in Allan Carr’s biography

Not Washed or Cooked, # 214

From Mo Juste, who says: ‘The restaurant and the menu seem to disagree on the name. On the plus side they do damn tasty South Indian food.’

Asian Exprss

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 166

Mo Juste on mangled Sundays in Northampton:

preformed for performed

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 75

Mo Juste went to Corby the other week, and this is what he found:

As he says, ‘If you’re going to get it wrong, make sure everyone can see it.’
carer’s wanted

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 74

Contributed by Mo Juste, who said rather sadly, ‘I despair…’ — as well he might.

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Artwork commemorate’s [sic] Northampton’s shoe history’

commemorate’s

You Cannot Be Serious, # 37

Mo Juste justly finds fault with this:

Link: YourNewsWire.com, ‘Man Who Predicted Swiss Euro Collapse Issues Dire Warning’

Mo comments: ‘An impressive triple variant on the spelling of predict. I especially like “predication”. Obviously the longer a word is the more intelligent the user.’ The writer also seems to be challenged by punctuation…

predication, predits [for prediction, predicts]; random hyphen; missing punctuation

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 70

Mo Juste contacted me a while ago to say he’d seen a mangle in a poster advertising a particular event, but hadn’t been in a position to take a photograph. I was fairly sure that I’d be able to find the error replicated somewhere; and, in the event, deciding which of the very many examples to use was the difficult part. So, in commemoration of the famous Scots poet, and based on an idea by Mo Juste, here are some apostrophe catastrophes:

Link: TalentScotland, ‘Burn’s Night celebrations’

Link: Bedford School, ‘Burn’s Night’

Burn’s Night; Burns Night

Double-take, # 118

Spotted in the Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, area by Mo Juste: 

Mo Juste comments: ‘Unfortunately it doesn’t have a company name, but obviously someone’s paid a fair bit of money to have it done.’ (One would hope not, given the mixture of font faces: some of the ls have serifs, but others don’t.) Mo even checked online in case someone had set up a company called Ulimited. The lack of company name or contact details does seem to be a bit of a problem if the plan is to persuade people to sign up; while ‘5Giga data’ seems to be a form of mondegreen.

Ulimited calls. Ulimited text.5Giga data

Double-take, # 115

A still-uncorrected error from last Friday’s online Express:

Link: Express, ‘Shoppers ordered to kneel on floor […]’

Mo Juste, who spotted the mangle, comments: ‘A despicable crime, indeed, but they’ll probably slip through the net quite easily.’

The report contains several other oddities, such as describing the malefactors as ‘balaclava-bearing’, which implies that they were carrying rather than wearing the headgear; and reporting an eyewitness as suggesting that the culprits ‘psyche [sic] themselves up on adrenaline’.

viscous thugs; psyche for psych; balaclava-bearing

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 153

This was submitted by Mo Juste in mid-October, but the error has still not been corrected:

Link: BBC iPlayer Radio, Feedback (10 October, 2014)

30 day

Double-take, # 111

Here’s a mangle from yesterday’s Guardian. It’s an article headline, ‘the one part you’d think they’d get right,’ comments contributor Mo Juste. Given the generous print size, it is indeed surprising that no-one noticed before it was too late:

Source: The Guardian, ‘The time has come time to slow down immigration’, ‘Journal’ section, p. 33

The headline of the online version seems not to have contained the error, even on initial publication.
The time has come time to slow down immigration

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 59

Another of Pop Spencer’s finds:

Source: The Guardian, 24 September, 2014, p. 14. Link: online version

Pop comments: ‘The old underestimate/overestimate mix up…’
underestimate for overestimate