Apostrophe catastrophe, # 117

Spotted on Clarendon Road, Watford:

11 minutes walk

Now Try It In English, # 5

Another from the inbox of Dr Faustus, and presumably based on the council’s template for calls to interview. Note that the ‘person to ask for’ was edited out, and is not an omission:

Test will be required to undertake on the day

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

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 63

Des Pond of Slough finds a hideous mangle in the window of Rugby Library:

Coal Merchant’s of Rugby

Not Washed or Cooked, # 154

This heinous error can be found in the main library of the University of Warwick:

The main mangle is joined by the lower-case z in the second line, which should be capitalized to harmonize with the other classification letters shown.

refernce

Not Washed or Cooked, # 116

From the ‘Note to the Reader’ accompanying a digitized archive of The Strand Magazine:

Link: Internet Archive, ‘The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly (1891—01 to 1922—12)’

adversisments

Not Washed or Cooked, # 103

Just found this mangle in an online questionnaire issued by the library of a Russell Group university:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 80

From the catalogue of the Library at the University of Warwick:

Link: University of Warwick Library, Classic Catalogue

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 23

Amongst his recent submissions, Dr Faustus, who has kept us entertained all week, sent in a screenshot of a (locked) webpage describing a module offered by the University of Warwick. The page is rather generously supplied with errors, so I thought we might focus on the one that made Dr Faustus most annoyed. It’s another of those pesky homophones that arise fairly often on the Mangling English blog:

Other departments offer this error to the general public. This example is particularly reprehensible, given that the correct word is shown in the category bar on the left:

Link: University of Warwick, School of Life Sciences, ‘LF301 – Bacteria: Genes to Behaviour’

The erroneous usage of principle for principal turns out to be appallingly common on official university webpages. Try looking through the results of an Internet search, such as the one shown below, based on a set search term (“principle aims of”) that is unlikely ever to be correct:*

Link: Google search on ‘“principle aims of” module university’

You would also think that a librarian would know the difference:

Link: University of Texas Digital Repository, Dorothy Ledbetter Hall, ‘Balancing Accountability and Ethics: A Case Study of An Elementary School Principle’

The abstract supplied on the page uses the correct word five times, and it also appears in the appended list of subject index terms. It is, of course, correct on the title page of the dissertation:

Link: University of Texas Digital Repository, Dorothy Ledbetter Hall, ‘Balancing Accountability and Ethics: A Case Study of An Elementary School Principle’ (pdf dissertation)

It isn’t just universities. This head teacher, for instance, has hedged his bets:

Link: LinkedIn, Matt Brandl (Morton Middle school principle)

The problem is found in other professional contexts too. Headline writers at the Vancouver Sun should surely know better:

Link: Vancouver Sun, ‘Heather Ogden […] principle dancer […]’

Nicely doubled up there for emphasis… but perhaps they were dutifully copying what they had been given by performance arts agencies, some of which also have trouble with the term:

Link: Gala Entertainment Management, ‘Nicole, Dancer, aerialist’

Link: MSA (McDonald/Selznick Associates), ‘Brittanie Brant’

The error can be found on websites promoting performances too. This one, from the cast page of a site advertising an impending tour of an Irish dancing show, also includes a couple of catastrophic apostrophes:

Link: Essence of Fire

The final two examples tidily bring us back to the beginning of this mangle by joining performance arts and universities. This is from website of the State University of New York:

 Link: SUNY Fredonia, Faculty at School of Music, biography of Shinobu Takagi

Finally, the University of East Anglia offers another singer, together with a nasty grammatical slip:**

Link: University of East Anglia, School of Music, biography of Hannah Francis

It’s good to know that there are so many principles out there. What a shame so many have nothing to do with good writing and presentation… and no guesses for what tomorrow’s mangle will be.

* If anyone can think of a context in which it would be correct, please let me know and I'll happily amend the page accordingly.

** As the Oxford Dictionaries entry confirms, the simple past form of the verb sing is sang, not sung, which is the past participle.

Not Washed or Cooked, # 6

Someone must have been paid to take the time to scan this in, run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, save the file, and upload the result: 

Link: HRVH Historical Newspapers, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council

Why, though? Never mind 'not 100% accurate': what possible use is the result to anyone?

With all the material there must be to archive, surely it's better just scan the original and upload it. This works:

Link: HRVH Historical Newspapers, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, 2

 

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 23

Today's mangles come from four different sources, all of which presumably want to be taken seriously, but all of which failed to check before publication whether their work contained unfortunate slips of the fingers.

Link: North Fork Merchant Herald, 'pubic face'

Link: Dartmouth College Library, 'pubic face'

Link: C&O Canal Trust, 'pubic face'

Link: Young, On Female Body Experience (New York: OUP, 2005), 'pubic face'

C&O might be forgiven, though even a non-profit organization should bother to proofread to make sure it's displaying itself as well as possible. The journalist should certainly know better, but it's not a rare error in the media. Dartmouth College Library is displaying a pretty dire 'pubic face' for this project; but the instance in Isis Marion Young's book takes the prize here: various educated persons, such as the publisher's reader(s) and maybe even an editor, will have read the work in its journey from proposal to publication and should have picked this one up. Perhaps they all thought Young was making some kind of obscure pun and didn't like to ask…