Not Washed or Cooked, # 309

From Just Liam comes this mind-boggling mangle. As is isn’t possible to determine how vacancies are uploaded and by whom, the perpetrator is not apparent, although the bonus mangle, from the same page, must certainly be the university’s own text:

Link: Indeed, ‘Instructor or Assistant Professer: UMD Department of History’

Professer; Smoking, chewing tobacco and the use of electronic cigarettes is prohibited

Singular or Plural? # 19

Spotted by Dr Faustus at Locksbridge Park, a new housing development in Andover:

The early bird gets the house they want

Double-take, # 230

The writer of this report seems not to understand that a whole word does not work the same way as its abbreviation, and needs a space:

Link: Express, ‘Private Contractors Cost NHS, and Taxpayers, Millions in Botched Operations’

£9million, £3.2million, £33million, £52million; failures […] has

Singular or Plural? # 18

Presently going the rounds online is this confusion of grammatical number. It started so well…

poverty and low pay were […] It was

Multimangle, # 45

From the inbox of Dr Faustus. It started off quite well, but then went very wrong…

What is your name and contact number? Where do you buy your clothes, please list 5 online and high street stops in orderr of preference?

Multimangle, # 42

This Google snapshot of its webpages suggests that J. D. Wetherspoon is having trouble harmonizing its corporate identity, amongst other things:

Link: Google search on ‘Wetherspoon’

Wetherspoon, founded in 1979 is a national chain across the whole of the UK & Ireland, with our award winning pubs & hotels, we are […]; Wetherspoon has […]; Wetherspoon have […]; Wetherspoon’ Pubs

Multimangle, # 41

From the backlog of Dr Faustus, who described it as ‘a dubious charity pitch letter’:

one of our fundraiser; work for the orphans, people living under the poverty; increasing the number of pupil; a grand success; also works along with helping people with Alzheimer’s and supporting those that care for Alzheimer’s disease; teaming up with us by cooperating to reach our goals

Other Englishes, # 3

These rather mangled instructions, submitted by Dr Faustus, come with Apachie brand bluetooth sports headphones:

alternativley; audiable; either devices

Multimangle, # 28

Dr Faustus sent this in for Singular or Plural?, highlighting the second paragraph’s nasty noun-verb disagreement. I’ve also kept the previous paragraph in the screenshot, which supplies a range of mangles, including the failed past participle, the nonsensical order of the first two clauses which, as it stands, expresses a chronological impossibility, and also the use of an indicative (‘is’) where a subjunctive would make more sense. The BBC’s own version of the text has now been considerably altered by further editing, but the text as originally published can be found via a Google search:

Link: BBC News, ‘China’s yuan gains IMF reserve status’

have suggest; concerns […] is; If Beijing’s wish is granted later on Monday, some analysts have suggest that by 2030 […]

Double-take, # 202

How can any professional writer think that a singular verb might be appropriate here? (The article’s title seems short of a possessive pronoun, too.)

Link: The Sunday Times, ‘Money’ section, ‘At 95, I’m fighting the NHS to fund wife’s care’

millions of pounds has [+ title: At 95, I’m fighting the NHS to fund wife’s care]

Double-take, # 200

Another mangled on-screen television programme guide entry (see here for an earlier one) for that cult classic series The Avengers. After the — erroneous — substitution of plural for singular in the first sentence, everything becomes very confused indeed:

peoples for people [+ general confusion]

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

Double-take, # 197

A humdinger of a mangle spotted by Dr Faustus:

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

There are lot’s of anger

Singular or Plural? # 17

Someone in Sainsbury’s sign-writing department seems confused about grammatical number, and varying the order of the nouns doesn’t help:

chicken and beef is; beef and chicken is

Double-take, # 192

Just Liam found a multilingual mangle in Tesco, and comments: ‘Maybe they’re taking their motto of “every little helps” a bit too seriously.’ At least the noun is plural in the French version, but ‘en poudre’ implies dried into powder form (for instance, lait en poudre is powdered milk), which is clearly not the case with noodles, and where the apostrophe comes from is anyone’s guess. Then there’s the rather odd adjective beneath, whose meaning is not very clear: 

The prefix ‘un-’ (to indicate that they haven’t been) would seem more appropriate than ‘non-’; but the point is superfluous, since it seems unlikely that fried noodles could be dried.

Dried Noodle; noodles en poud’re; non-fried

Multimangle, # 26

The stone circle alluded to here certainly predates the apostrophe, and the name applied to it may well do, but the modern signage at the site does not and apostrophes consistently appear in the name on the official website (of which more tomorrow). It is also not apparent why the name here is treated as a plural when ‘The Rollright Stones’ — equally plural to the naked eye — takes singular verb forms on the website (where this name does not appear as a subject); nor why the superfluous singular subject noun in the first paragraph on the sign is treated as if plural:

Kings Men

Singular or Plural? # 16

The Telegraph hedges its bets in this article about the RSPB:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘RSPB’s failure with hen harrier nests in £2m scheme’

RSPB has; RSPB have

Other Englishes, # 1

The first of two days of lovely scam emails. Such scams are another reason (if one were needed) to teach, learn and use good English, and to read properly instead of skim, so that recipients can determine when they are being scammed; this is especially important when scammers’ offerings are made to look convincing with logos and apparently official email addresses:

As is often the case, the key errors in this email are verb tenses and grammatical number, although there are some odd prepositions here too, and ’prevent’ has been used as if it were a direct synonym of ’protect’.

by for from [x2]; introduce for [has] introduced; prevent for protect; restore for restored; remove for removed; field for fields

Double-take, # 145

A nasty case, including singular-as-plural, a syntactical minefield, and some punctuation overkill:

Source: Rugby Observer (20 November, 2014), p. 16, and online

Are your agency […]?? [PMP Recruitment]

Singular or Plural? # 15

Following on nicely from Wednesday’s ill-formed and verbose headlines and yesterday’s two-nouns-with-singular-verb comes another grammatically suspect and overlong headline, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Prince Charles letters […]

A panel of seven senior judges are