Double-take, # 236

This seems improbable:

Link: MNT/Medical News Today, ‘Menopause Does Not Result In Weight Gain […]’

hops for hips [+ professor for Professor]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 181

This can presently be seen among similar (if unmangled) home-produced announcements decorating the shopfront of a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine in South Kensington:

specilise

Double-take, # 82

This comes via Dr Faustus, and seems to be from a standard medical practice new-patient form. The bonus mangles suggest that the template might have been typed after lunch… Hic!

How Often; when your are drinking

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 41

Another mangled homophone:

Link: ‘Our Town For Teens’, Texas Department of State Health Services

Does it matter? Of course: ‘cite’ isn’t that common a word in everyday life, but no-one will find out what it means by looking ‘site’ up in the dictionary.

sited for cited

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 37

This notice, found on display in a care home, has several examples of acyrologia:

The misuse of bought for brought featured in The Wrong Word Entirely, # 1. It’s accompanied here by a confusion of insure for ensure and attain for obtain, and some odd phrasing and punctuation overall. Perhaps it’s intended as a test of the inmates’ mental faculties…

bought for brought; insure for ensure; attain for obtain

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 110

Old Chelsea spotted a rather odd list of ‘Diet recommendations’ in an NHS ‘rehabilitation unit’. This is the most mangled section:

brawn toast &c

Mangling Meaning, # 20

Day 3 of things that don’t really say what they mean, or perhaps don’t mean what they say, brings a sign on display at the Caludon Centre at University Hospital, Coventry:

The contributor, Krissie Pearse, comments: ‘The other adult entrance hasn’t been here as long.’

I’ve been looking at it on and off for a few days now, and I still can’t imagine the situation, or subsequent conversation,* that resulted in the sign being requisitioned…

* Though I think one of the participating voices must have belonged to Bob Newhart.

Double-take, # 16

This recent news report qualifies in a couple of categories. Here are the headline and subhead:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Pharmacy charged NHS […]’

The oddities occur in the subhead, the key issue being the superfluous ‘cheaper’: if something costs ‘almost 30 times as much’ as an alternative, that alternative is self-evidently less expensive.

In addition, surely the pharmacy would claim the expense, not claim the expense back, from the NHS. Nor is it accurate to say that the pharmacy ‘gave’ the prescribed cod liver oil to patients: presumably at least some of them were paying a contribution towards the cost of medication (the prescription charge is currently £7.85) as well as contributing, or having contributed, towards the NHS via taxes.

 A sentence later in the report also provides a puzzle:

What ‘it’? The pronoun is a long way from its antecedent and the sentence as it stands makes it seem that the company neuters its pharmacists…

Not Washed or Cooked, # 45

Another day, another mangle… This comes from a list of selling points on a dental practice’s website:

Link: Bilton Dental Clinic

Two nouns associated to form an adjective should be linked by a hyphen, not simply run into a single, new word. That would also give the spellchecker (if used) a chance, although basic proofreading should have picked the omission up.

On another page, the clinic has this rather odd construction:

Link: Bilton Dental Clinic | Expert Dental Treatment

Either ‘Some of the treatments we offer’, or ‘The treatments we offer include’. Not both.

The site offers more wincing-inducing moments, and this not very reassuring reassurance:

Link: Bilton Dental Clinic | Expert Dental Treatment

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 33

Something went wrong in some sections of The Guardian's report earlier this week on the problems of obese NHS patients:

The confused use of quotation marks doesn't help to clarify what is already a rather confused quotation. More issues arise later:

  Link: The Guardian, 'NHS … obese patients'

A little editing and proofreading might have been useful.

 

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 22

Of course the pubic typo — of which more in due course: it's a popular one — can work both ways:

Link: Right Diagnosis, 'Public lice'

I'd rather not have had an opportunity to associate M&S with infestation… but apparently the advertising keeps the site free, and Right Diagnosis (RD) may be able to afford a proofreader one day. 

 

Right Diagnosis, in case you're wondering, is 'one of the world's leading providers of online medical health information'. That's what its About Us page says and it should know:

Link: Right Diagnosis, 'About us'

It's good to know consumers and health professionals have somewhere they can find information about public lice, whatever they are… except, as the astute will have spotted, it actually doesn't say that at all. It seems to be referring to a different website altogether: WrongDiagnosis.com.

So what happens when you type 'www.wrongdiagnosis.com' into an address bar and hit the return key?

You arrive here:

 Link: Better Medicine

It's beyond me! I think it may be beyond them too…