Not Washed or Cooked, # 276

This is taken from The Guardian’s version of an article first published (as a comment at the end advises) in Mosaic — without the mangle. This rather implies that someone at The Guardian has been practising hypercorrection. A note subsequently added to the text refers to a factual correction made on 16 December; this mangle, however, remains:

Link: The Guardian, ‘What science doesn’t know about the menopause: what it’s for and how to treat it’

bespioke

Double-take, # 203

At some point in the last year or so, someone at eBay (or possibly ebay: both can be found on the company’s webpages these days) altered this word in the email notification template from the correct spelling to this mangle, ignoring the company’s own advice on checking spelling:

matche

Double-take, # 195

Another find by Des Pond of Slough. Hypercorrection, perhaps:

Link: Rugby Observer (22 October, 2015), p. 7

squalour

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 73

Hypercorrection by the BBC — but however many times it’s repeated, it’s still wrong:

Link: BBC, BBC One, Watchdog (6 November, 2014), ‘Owner’s [sic] Direct’

The company’s name is shown correctly in the logo on the videoclip (shown above) and again, twice, in its response, which is reproduced on the BBC’s webpage. So why all the apostrophes?

Owner’s Direct [for Owners Direct]

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 72

Here is one of many examples of this mangle. It may be a hypercorrection; it’s certainly nonsensical:

Link: Manchester Evening News, ‘Don’t add your name to the “sucker’s list”’

sucker’s list

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 69

Mangled breadcrumbs and links again; this time a persistent problem with a placename, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mountain’s name was consistently spelt correctly on the linked page, though it‘s unclear if the mangle in the links (perhaps a hypercorrection) was made by human or automatic agency:

Link: BBC News, ‘El Capitan — the world's toughest climb? in 90 seconds’

El Captain for El Capitan [a couple of times]

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 64

Following on from last Thursday’s heinous mangle in which a Rugby librarian had copied a book’s title, but added an apostrophe, here’s the Simply Entertainment cataloguer copying a programme title, but excising the apostrophe clearly and correctly shown on the DVD box:

Source: Simply Entertainment, August 2014, p. 40

Devils Whore

You Cannot Be Serious, # 29

The first, and worse, of two mangles from BBC 1’s Watchdog a couple of weeks ago. This is a detail of a tee-shirt specially made for a ‘rogue trader’ exposed on the programme:

Source: BBC 1 Watchdog, series 34, episode 2 (23 October 2014), and online: ‘UK Damp and Decay Control - part 4’

This mangling of the Gospel of John, 8:7, is hideous, but certainly isn’t unique. For instance, ‘Let he who is without sin’ is the title of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, series 5, episode 7. However, the Star Trek franchise has never set itself up as an authority on English grammar, unlike the BBC, which offers English courses for children and adults, but doesn’t seem to require its staff to lead by example  or, where necessary, take a remedial course.

The phrase suffers from hypercorrection, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as ‘[t]he use of an erroneous word form or pronunciation based on a false analogy with a correct or prestigious form, such as the use of I instead of me as a grammatical object (as in he invited my husband and I to lunch)’.
Let he who is without sin