Not Washed or Cooked, # 310

Via Dr Faustus:

Link: The Independent, ‘Procrastination Makes You More Creative, Research Says’

procratisnation

Not Washed or Cooked, # 284

A typographical error plus overuse of conjunctions (not an example of polysyndeton, methinks) in the final paragraph here. The earlier ones are included to show why the question In what way is this either news or journalism? came to mind as I was reading them:

Link: The Independent, ‘London’s “cheapest flat” sells for £79,000 in Clapton’

recieved (as well as received); and … and … and

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 83

Another of those pesky homophones, perhaps a hangover from the recent general election. The tone and lexis here suggest that The Independent, once a credible broadsheet, is close to completing its transformation into a tabloid, though the report does appear in a section called ‘Weird news’:

Link: The Independent, ‘Man arrested for “kidnapping” his own son […]’

canvass for canvas

Double-take, # 159

Ryan McCarthy has caught out The Independent in an unfortunate template error and, as it turns out, an arithmetical one too:

Source: The Independent, 26 May, 2015, p. 5

dummy text in template display box

Double-take, # 155

The inclusion of a few relative pronouns and some hyphens would mean that this piece of text could be grasped in a single reading:

Link: The Independent, ‘Soldiers told to move their wedding so Obama can play golf’

AP reports the White House sources said they were unaware the couple had been told they should relocate; no on the record comment

Not Washed or Cooked, # 224

Not, despite the headline (see link below), a continuation of yesterday’s food theme, but Independent carelessness renaming a London Borough:

Link: The Independent, ‘Jeremy Paxman gets grilled […]’

Kensigton

Mangling Meaning, # 29

It would seem that over-excitement has once again affected The Independent’s ability to construct a coherent and grammatically-correct sentence. It was going so well, too:

Link: The Independent, ‘Richard Hammond “gutted” about Jeremy Clarkson sacking […]’

he left the possibility of him and May continuing without Clarkson

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 176

A slip on the keyboard, and no checking for mangles:

Link: The Independent, ‘easyJet apologises after calling customer’s lawyer a “motherf****r”’

easyJets aid for easy said

Double-take, # 146

There seems to be much uncertainty in this report’s opening paragraph:

Link: The Independent, ‘Man allegedly stabs two people at Detroit bus stop after asking if they were Muslims’

The phrase ‘according to a report’ surely negates the need for any expression of allegation, never mind two of them (plus another in the unwieldy headline).

2x allegedly + 1 in headline

Not Washed or Cooked, # 209

Another mangled headline from The Independent:

Link: The Independent, ‘World’s largest plane graveyard […]’

As so often happens, this mangle quickly ran round the digital world:

Link: Google, search for "amaznig interactive map"

amaznig

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 167

No proofreading = no sense:

Link: The Independent, ‘Muslim women’s rights campaigner […]’

co-exited for co-existed

Double-take, # 125

The use of prepositions seems fast to be growing both random and illogical, despite the fact that even quite basic dictionaries usually indicate, often with examples, which preposition to use in a verb+preposition construction. This opening sentence of a recent news item offers a bizarre concept:

Link: The Independent, ‘Israel not included in HarperCollins map […]’

Omit means leave out, so it is not only inaccurate to use the preposition in, but also both illogical and counterintuitive. Oxford Dictionaries and Cambridge Dictionaries Online, amongst others, clearly show that this verb takes the preposition from.

omitted … in

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 64

A confusing proposition from The Independent:

Link: The Independent, ‘Man banned from entering park on his own because of paedophile fears’

While the headline is clear, the report’s opening sentence suggests that the entry criteria are based on marital and parental status rather than immediate circumstances. In fact, the man who was denied entry is a parent (another piece of mangled English: ‘The grandfather and father of three grown up children’), which sets up a contradiction with the opening statement since he is likely to be married, divorced or widowed rather than ‘single’. Presumably the writer meant lone men or women unaccompanied by a child.

banning single men or women without children

Double-take, # 94

This mangle results from modern technological methods — a technomangle, perhaps — since it’s a direct consequence of the longer headlines facilitated by internet publishing. I had planned to post the report to my Facebook stream, but then I noticed what happened to the headline on the preview and decided it deserved a space here:

Link: The Independent, ‘Half of young women unable to “locate vagina” and 65% find it difficult to say the word’

Half of young women unable to ‘locate vagina’ and 65% find it

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

Not Washed or Cooked, # 164

A bit of a mess from the Indie’s archives:

Link: The Independent, ‘Forget the gadgets, housework today is as tough as it was 60 years ago’

Unied States + duplicate opening paragraph

Double-take, # 68

A very literal double-take this time:

Link: The Independent, ‘After 100,000 miles, Palin gives up globetrotting’

duplicate paragraph

Not Washed or Cooked, # 137

Connections for really important information?

Link: The Independent, ‘Why is my internet so slow? […]’

I wondered briefly — this being the world of journalism — whether ‘superfact’ actually existed, which would make this a Spellchecking Is Never Enough mangle; but standard spell-checkers (WordPerfect, Word and Google) and a Google search suggest not.

superfact connection

Double-take, # 20

In context, the closing words in the extract below are puzzling:

Link: The Independent, ‘Male sexist gorilla […]’

Other females?

Mangling Meaning, # 13

Ther are several ways this request might be reported. A gerund isn’t any of them…

Link: The Independent, ‘Questions Of Cash: Mistakes and delays that left a £15,000 hole in my pension’