Double-take, # 246

What a difference a hyphen can — or would — make!

Link: North Devon Journal

Pram pushing Barnstaple mother ‘so drunk she couldn't stand’

Double-take, # 242

As Mo Juste points out, ‘This does rather sound like a large and dangerous bag is at large.’ It is hard to see how the bag is significant enough to feature in the headline at all, much less in prime position (it appears near the end of the report, as part of a description of the miscreant), but, as it stands, a hyphen might improve matters:

Link: Northampton Chronicle & Echo

Hessian bag carrying man sexually assaulted woman

You Cannot Be Serious, # 74

This fairly short piece of text is marked by confusion, due to a failure to proofread before posting — or since: the mangle, submitted by Dr Faustus a month ago was still in place as of this morning — and an absence of any of the hyphens required by the rules of grammar and for the sake of clarity, as well as inconsistency in the positioning of the registered trademark symbol:

Link: Vitae, ‘Vitae Three Minute Thesis competition’

by the until the end of June; Three Minute Thesis competition; Vitae hosted

You Cannot Be Serious, # 72

These come via Gary Hazell. The top screenshot is taken of the company’s website (where one of the many mangles has now been corrected), and the other from its Facebook page. A cynic might say the copy had been rushed out to take advantage of circumstances:

Link: PhilosophyFootball.com, ‘Muhammad Ali’

Link: Facebook, PhilosophyFootball, 4 June, 2016, 10:42

WE REMEMBER £5 FROM EACH SHIRT, solidatirty, dinated, suppoters, anti-war, pro Civil Rights; persoinal

Multimangle, # 53

A veritable cornucopia of mangles!

Link: Honeywell VT117 Traditional Flow Radiator Thermostat, ‘Installation and User Instruction’ leaflet

temerature, guideance, decorators cap, cle-aning, sea-ting, seperate

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 105

The writer knows what the right word is, as it appears in the final paragraph here, but the word used in second paragraph makes little sense, as Dr Faustus observes. There’s a hyphen missing too:

Link: BBC News, ‘Britons with “wrong passport” stopped from travelling to US’

biometric trip [for chip]; old style passport

Double-take, # 223

The Express apparently driving the point home in February 2016 in this headline (now changed):

Link: The Express, ‘Right-wing fascists bring Liverpool to a standstill as violence erupts’

Later in the report came this gem:

Aside from the omission of the crucial hyphen (and why ‘right-wing’, but not ‘far-right’?), the verb ‘carrying out’ applied to saluting seems very odd, in a way that ‘performing’, or even ‘doing’, might not.

Right-wing fascists; carrying out far right salutes

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 228

Today’s seasonal offering brings a range of mangles wrapped a short paragraph and finished with an astoundingly apt typographical slip:

Link: Community Restaurants’ Blog, ‘So how well did Restaurants do this Easter?’

the the; thats; 16830000; Fifty one; holiday themed buffet; in that order respectively; traditional Eater meal

Multimangle, # 44

This much-mangled and puzzlingly retro webpage comes via Mo Juste, who comments: ‘I found a website about Abington Park, probably Northampton’s “jewel”, and thought how awful it looked. So I clicked on the web designer’s link. I leave the rest to you’ — quite a lot of ‘rest’, too!

Link: Mad Dezign

customize you website idea’s to a simple user friendly look, whilst not losing the concepts of the site you want to look like; who don't want the bother or spending huge amounts; easy to work with, whilst, maintaining a profession feel; heavy code

Not Washed or Cooked, # 291

Today’s mangling of ‘appropriate’ (juxtaposed with a scarcity of hyphens) is taken from a blog run by the National Fire Protection Association, which is based in the USA, but describes itself as ‘a global, nonprofit organization’, thus neatly contradicting its name:

Link: NFPA Safety Source blog, 21 November 2014, ‘Ideas on how your kids can help in the kitchen […]’

aprropriate; [no matter their age]

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

Multimangle, # 23

No-one seems to have proofread this text (contributed by Dr Faustus), which comes from the Best Western Hotel, Findlater Place, Dublin:

pre authorisation (x4); Pre authorisation are; thought for though

Not Washed or Cooked, # 245

This, sent in by Des Pond of Slough, is extracted from a membership-benefits advertisement featured in the club magazine of the Civil Service Motoring Association (CSMA). The mangle (whose correct form can be found in UK-English spell-checkers in standard applications such as WordPerfect and Word) occurs among the postcards, although arguably the text beneath requires a hyphen:

Source: CSMA, Club Life, July-August, 2015, p. 70

Madiera

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

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 81

Spotted by John Holloway, one missing apostrophe (and arguably a missing hyphen), plus another that’s strictly correct though unusual, since business convention usually ignores it:

boatings best kept secrets

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 177

Dr Faustus has sent this extract from an emailed recruitment circular, which demonstrates a failure to proofread, an absence of logical hyphenation and an abrupt shift in perspective:

a supervisors; third person to second person shift

Double-take, # 132

John Holloway spotted this in Tesco in Colchester:

John asks: ‘Is it “stir fries” or “stirfrys”? I feel as though it should be the former.’

Standard dictionaries don’t show a plural, which suggests that the term follows normal English rules, with one fry becoming multiple fries. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries and Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary confirm this, but all sources checked show that the term should be hyphenated: stir-fry and (where shown) stir-fries.

stir frys [noun]

Not Washed or Cooked, # 186

Mangle-eyed readers will have noticed that, ‘the festive season’ being upon us, the blog has already featured a couple of Christmas-based mangles, and for the next week or so will focus on the seasonal theme.

In 2012, we had fun with various manglings of Santa and Claus, while 2013 was mainly concerned with mangles in Christmas songs. (These are all available in the blog’s archive.) This year, there’s a single mangle, but presented in increasingly appalling settings.

Today‘s spelling mangle, from the website of the Mattapoisett Historical Society in Massachusetts, is supported by a failure-to-hyphenate —

Link: Mattapoisett Historical Society, Events, ‘Drop In Christams Craft’

— that makes it seem at first to be reporting on a reduction in those making items associated with the season.

Drop In Christams

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 67

Spotted by Des Pond of Slough, this advertisement for The Old Plough, Braunston, provides a variety pack of apostrophe catastrophes:

Source: The Village Emporium, Borders edition, September/October 2014, p. 30

You will search in vain for a note connected to the asterisk…
fish n chips; Pensioners portion; hand cut chips; pie’s and pudding’s

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 66

Here, on Mangling English’s birthday, a double-whammy apostrophe catastrophe —

Source: The Rugby Register, North & Villages edition, December 2014, p. 14, and online.
Cf. South and Central edition, p. 29, and online

— is supported by a failure to hyphenate ‘lead-up’ and some question-mark overkill. Pictured is the face of the mangle-spotter on spotting the mangles.

tip‘s; lead up; ???