The Wrong Word Entirely, # 84

It’s hard to tell whether this error is the journalist’s or the bank’s, although surely the former should have corrected it anyway. Since t and p are not adjacent on the keyboard, it’s probably not a typographical error, and is more likely to be a mondegreen or eggcorn since, when sounded with a glottal stop, the wrong word can barely, if at all, be distinguished from the correct word. Similar errors in published writing and in students’ written work suggest that this is becoming an increasingly common problem.

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘Scandal of the missing cash from dormant RBS account’

upmost for utmost

Double-take, # 123

This mangle is surprisingly widespread and comes in at least these two variants, but there may be more. The first example is the more common error:

Link: NorthPole.com, Craft Cottage, ‘Poke a Dot Luminaries’

The second is less common, but not hard to find:

Link: Volcom.com, ‘Poker Dot Gloves’

The Oxford English Dictionary shows a pronunciation difference between UK- and US-English:

Spelling errors are thus more likely to be American. The term must, of course, be taught. If the l is not sounded, the correct spelling cannot be deduced from the sound; nor can it be inferred through logic, for, as the Online Etymology Dictionary points out, the connection between polka dots and the polka is arbitrary: the dance was popular and it became fashionable to append the name randomly.

An American company produces a series of ‘Poke-a-Dot’ books, intended to teach counting to young children:

Link: InnovativeKids, Our Products, ‘Poke-A-Dot’

The series title is a great pun; but a pun can be fun and effective only if it is understood as a pun. In practice, this series title is likely to consolidate the misspelling, and it is not impossible that the title is itself based on a misunderstanding of the term.

poke-a-dot; poker dot

Not Washed or Cooked, # 184

This mangle comes from a blog entry on a website whose title seems to be missing a necessary apostrophe:

Link: The Creators Project [sic], ‘24-Hour Online Cat TV […]’

It’s not clear whether this is a typographical error or a mondegreen. Either way, the writer has not run the text through a spell-checker or consulted a dictionary.

Admist for amidst; Creators Project

Double-take, # 118

Spotted in the Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, area by Mo Juste: 

Mo Juste comments: ‘Unfortunately it doesn’t have a company name, but obviously someone’s paid a fair bit of money to have it done.’ (One would hope not, given the mixture of font faces: some of the ls have serifs, but others don’t.) Mo even checked online in case someone had set up a company called Ulimited. The lack of company name or contact details does seem to be a bit of a problem if the plan is to persuade people to sign up; while ‘5Giga data’ seems to be a form of mondegreen.

Ulimited calls. Ulimited text.5Giga data