Multimangle, # 55

Another unsolicited email, with a rather naive subject line, from the inbox of Dr Faustus:

write you; no for not; 30mins; if you have interest in know what the job entails [omitted articles; comma splices]

Other Englishes, # 4

I’m guessing that the writer of this spam email is not a native speaker of English, but I can’t decide quite how this range of mangles, spanning subject line to sign-off, has arisen:

you get new tax refund from GOV, You'are, An payment, King Regards

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, # 2

Following on from yesterday’s scam email, here is a second, showing another familiar set of errors, such as stilted syntax, the omission of direct and indirect articles, or use of an incorrect article, and the omission of a letter at the end of a word that results in a spell-checker appeasing preposition instead of the intended noun:

missing/incorrect articles (Natwest Online Banking team; introduce new much secured …] process; you are the member of our online banking); simple for filling procedure; you can get advantage

Not Washed or Cooked, # 236

Two mangles were included in a short section of a marketing email received from Routledge, the academic publishing house, on 11 May, 2015 (full browser version here):

Following the link to the main page for French Grammar and Usage brings you to the website’s main page on the text, which varies the information slightly, but still repeats both of these mangles:

Link: Routledge — Taylor & Francis Group, ‘French Grammar and Usage’

seaparately

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 81

There are various mangles and oddities in this extract from an email sent in May by eBay, including some missing articles and some illogical verb tenses. The key issue is the word ‘language’, which is used rather strangely throughout. The last two paragraphs in particular seem to require something more specific, such as ‘terminology’ or ‘terms‘:

additional language, new language &c; missing articles; incorrect verb tenses

Double-take, # 107

This oddity from the archive is most likely the result of incomplete and unchecked reordering:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Cyprus bailout cost surges to €23bn’

an €6bn extra

Multimangle, # 5

Another less-than-believable email from my inbox:

companys courier, the delivery of parcel, you address, at 26th June, Print your label and show it in the nearest post office to get a parcel

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 94

More article/noun mismatches, today from the world of clothing. This one comes from a blog:

Link: Katy Werlin, ‘Head to Toe: A 14th Century Woman’, The Fashion Historian (10 March, 2011)*

This unintentionally humorous description is from an article in The Telegraph, but seems to be quoted from a press release:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Ryanair: extra baggage and lower charges herald customer-friendly upgrade’

* The statement is factually as well as grammatically mangled. Amongst other authorities, Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane observe that ‘[b]raies […] were worn exclusively by men’ (Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 41).

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 91

A few examples of yet another problem that will not be picked up by a spellchecker:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘11 ways to protect your privacy on Facebook’

Link: BBC News, ‘Beer taste excites male brain’

Source: Sky onscreen television schedule

Double-take, # 24

This is what automatically shows when you find a word on the Thesaurus.com website and post the URL:

Obviously better at direct articles than indirect articles…

Double-take, # 12

Des Pond of Slough was slightly puzzled by content in an email from the Open University:

He remarks: ‘I would assume that “modern advertising” was still using 13th- to 17th-century techniques, or have I fallen through a temporal anomaly?’

It’s also worth pointing out that the phrase ‘the 13th to 17th century’ needs another direct article, might benefit from pluralizing its noun (‘the 13th to the 17th centuries’), and would seem more elegant, and thus more professional, without the unnecessary abbreviations (thus: ‘the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries’), which might have resulted in fewer errors in the first place.