Not Washed or Cooked, # 313

Someone recommended to me The Disappearance, an eight-part French thriller shown on BBC4. The subtitles came with a glaring mangle:

Epiosde

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 108

A televisual mangle:

Two Ronnie’s Spectacle

Double-take, # 205

From the Dr Faustus backlog, here is a lovely bit of confusion from the ITV website:

Link: ITV.com, ‘Louisa Johnson sings her Winner'’s Song — Forever Young’

Louisa Johnson … his version

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]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 253

To celebrate the blog’s thousandth post, here is a lovely Midsomer Murders mangle that I’ve been saving for a special occasion:

Source: Midsomer Murders, series 13, episode 6, ‘The Noble Art’

turf accounants

You Cannot Be Serious, # 53

Pairing nicely with yesterday’s bit of grammatical hideousness is this mangled on-set television guide entry contributed by John Holloway:

I’m not sure where the various schedulers obtain the programme information, but presumably the synopsis is supplied by the programme-makers. Coast is a collaboration between the Open University and BBC Productions, Birmingham.

sunk for sank

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 193

This mangle from Dr Faustus shows a mispositioned space resulting in nonsensical text, despite the fact that the words exist. Some might find the use, in the same sentence, of a singular noun with plural pronoun and verb to be on the borderline of grammatical acceptability as notional agreement:

Link: Channel 5, Suspects

behind the mall the way; team show

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 164

Just Nick found this mangle on ITV’s website:

you’re for your

Double-take, # 124

It is hard to tell exactly what can have happened to this supposed television programme information, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mangle here is, of course, ‘assistances’, although the whole thing turns out to be a mangle since the episode actually shown in this slot was from a much later series, in which the Avengers were John Steed and Mrs Emma Peel, not from the original 1961 series, which begins with a focus on a character called Dr David Keel, with assistance from the (definitely neither female nor plural) John Steed, who gradually takes over the lead role.

assistances for assistant/assistants

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 60

Ouch!

Source: Simply Entertainment, August 2014, p. 5

All Our Yesterday’s

Not Washed or Cooked, # 179

As promised yesterday, the second of two mangles spotted on a recent episode of BBC 1’s Watchdog, this time on a segment introducing a service offered by Moonpig.com:

Source: BBC 1 Watchdog, series 34, episode 2 (23 October 2014), at approximately 51 minutes

advertisment

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 120

Dr Faustus has been watching television, or at least he’s been consulting a television guide. This programme summary had successfully negotiated two apostrophes, but then it all went wrong…

4OD, Channel 4’s online On Demand service, varies the summary, but creates some new confusion:

Link: 4OD, Come Dine with Me, Series 30 Episode 124, ‘Woking and Weybridge: Sara’

Will Sara managed to exceed her guests low expectations? to host, for what

Double-take, # 59

This mistyped Ancient Egyptian god is not the first mangle Dr Faustus has spotted on the BBC’s Only Connect:

Source: Only Connect, Sport Relief: Scribblers v. Terriers, BBC4, 17 March 2014. Link: iPlayer

Hours for Horus

Double-take, # 51

The BBC doling out misinformation in series 4 of Shaun the Sheep:

Edited from screenshot of BBC iPlayer 21 February 2014.
Information now replaced by subsequent programming information

As Des Pond of Slough observes, a spider is not an insect.
a spider is not an insect

Not Washed or Cooked, # 115

The BBC mangling spelling in Death in Paradise, series 3, episode 6 (‘The Early Bird’):

tresspassers

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 28

Not a well-placed apostrophe on this DVD cover:

It’s definitely a collection of films from the 1960s, not from 1960.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 107

Dr Faustus sent this in:

Link: BBC Four, Only Connect, ‘Pilots v Globetrotters’ (Series 8, Episode 5)

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, # 14

Since having Sky installed some years ago, I’ve found very few errors on its schedule. This, however, is a beauty:

Gibbs’ should, of course, be Gibbs’s (this use of the possessive apostrophe was covered last week); but it’s the relationships that have confused the scheduler: both Gibbs and Fornell have (not concurrently) been married to the same woman, whose present husband’s abduction is the focal point of the episode. Definitely only one kidnap victim, so the are should be is.

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 15

Spotted on an advertising hoarding, this is a variant of the issue addressed in the first Apostrophe catastrophe:

The opening quotation mark should, of course, be an apostrophe, since it’s representing a missing letter within the contraction. Perhaps that should have warned filmgoers what to expect…