Double-take, # 245

This is not an adjective:

Link: South Hams Gazette, ‘Dog Alerts Dartmouth Family to Fridge-freezer Blaze’

hero for heroic

Not Washed or Cooked, # 263

Dr Faustus points out that today’s submission is especially reprehensible because of its source: a college that specializes, according to its logo, in ‘courses in proofreading, journalism, writing and marketing’. The mangles — a misspelling and a noun pretending to be an adjective — come from its page outlining the NCTJ [National Council for the Training of Journalists] diploma:

Source: The College of Media and Publishing. ‘Do the NCTJ diploma with the experts’

receive; specialist for specialized

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 175

From Unintended Saucy Humour comes an uncorrected typographical error in the penultimate line of this extract. Close by, an adjective is incorrectly being used as a noun, which is especially odd given that it is clearly understood as an adjective in the article’s title and that the noun form exists:

Link: Donald W. Katzner, ‘A Neoclassical Curmudgeon Looks at Heterodox Criticisms of Microeconomics’,  World Economic Review, 4 (2015), 63–75 (p. 64)

quiet for quite; neoclassical as noun

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 94

More article/noun mismatches, today from the world of clothing. This one comes from a blog:

Link: Katy Werlin, ‘Head to Toe: A 14th Century Woman’, The Fashion Historian (10 March, 2011)*

This unintentionally humorous description is from an article in The Telegraph, but seems to be quoted from a press release:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Ryanair: extra baggage and lower charges herald customer-friendly upgrade’

* The statement is factually as well as grammatically mangled. Amongst other authorities, Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane observe that ‘[b]raies […] were worn exclusively by men’ (Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 41).

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 91

A few examples of yet another problem that will not be picked up by a spellchecker:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘11 ways to protect your privacy on Facebook’

Link: BBC News, ‘Beer taste excites male brain’

Source: Sky onscreen television schedule

Multimangle, # 3

The first paragraph needed spellchecking and/or proofreading, and there are several confusing shifts between singular and plural forms in the last two paragraphs:

Link: The Times (subscription only), ‘Retired police dogs to get ‘“state pensions”’

Double-take, # 25

ASDA copywriters seem to be having trouble understanding the name of the second product listed here, though it isn’t the verbal or grammatical confusion that has brought about its recall:

Source: The Daily Telegraph, 12/10/13, p. 8

It’s not clear whether this is intended to be a ‘Wondrous Witches’ hat (part of a ‘Wondrous Witches’ range, perhaps) or a ‘Wondrous’ witch’s hat (from a ‘Wondrous’ range), or the hat of a witch who is wondrous, or simply a witch’s hat that is itself wondrous. The variant on ASDA’s website is capitalized in such a way as to make the whole construction appear to be the product’s name, though the intended meaning still isn’t clear:

Link: ASDA, Press Centre, ‘Product Recall: George Wicked Witch Kit and Asda Wondrous Witches Hat’

Later, the press release states:

The subordinate clause fails to achieve an agreement in number between the verb (is) and the nouns (care and safety, thus requiring are). This cavalier approach to grammar is echoed in the statement’s content. If customers’ care and safety really were ASDA’s ‘priority’, how could these two items have been passed as fit for sale? (On the same day, The Telegraph published another ASDA recall notice, for a hairdryer, on p. 20, and there is quite a list of live recalls on the retailer’s website, the majority being food products or items for children.)

Perhaps the company would benefit from greater care and precision all round…

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 16

Today, another apostrophe — or rather another gap where an apostrophe should be — in a prayer that was posted on Facebook, and which you can buy, with minor variations and less punctuation, as a poster at Zazzle:

Here, of course, Jesus needs a possessive apostrophe and a possessive s: Jesus’s. I’m not sure when and where the habit began of not adding the normal ’s to singular nouns ending in s, but it isn’t right, it isn’t clear, and it offers much opportunity for error and misunderstanding. The added possessive ending should also be pronounced…

The rules are covered in Oxford Dictionaries, under ‘Apostrophe’. However, I can’t agree with OxfordDictionaries about the correctness of exemptions to the rule (and I’m backed by both the British MHRA Style Guide and the North American MLA Style Manual on this): all singular nouns ending  in s, common and proper, should take a final s after the possessive apostrophe.

OxfordDictionaries offers St Thomas’ Hospital to exemplify the exemptions. Wikipedia points out that it was ‘usually known as St Thomas’s Hospital until the late 20th century’ — but why should some idiot’s grammatical fail be allowed to mar and mangle the moniker of an ancient institution?* I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it St Thomas’ Hospital (i.e. St Thomas Hospital) only St Thomas’s Hospital (St Thomasez Hospital).


* A brief history of the hospital can be found on The Old Operating Theatre: Museum and Herb Garret website, which points out that the hospital ‘was described as ancient in 1215’.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 75

Des Pond of Slough sends this:

Link: BBC News, Eyewitness

and comments: ‘I could be a Social Affairs Correspondent. Hang on, that’s not a job title: he’s a Social affairs correspondent. Friendly, adulterous and communicative, in that order?’

It’s a fair point. Capitalization seems to be becoming random, yet the dozen or so grammar sites I’ve checked this morning agree that a job title relating to a specific person and role, following the person’s name and identifying the capacity is which that person is operating in the immediate circumstances (e.g., John Cross, Features Editor), should be capitalized, whereas the term used to describe a working role more broadly (John Cross is a features editor or John Cross is the features editor) should not.

It makes sense: this is, after all, related to the issue of common and proper nouns. In the case of the fictitious John Cross, the compound noun in John Cross is the features editor is a generic descriptor of a role, and thus a common noun; while the construction John Cross, Features Editor presents Features Editor as a formal job title and a proper noun.

In today’s example, Michael Buchanan is writing not in his private capacity, but specifically in his role as Social Affairs Correspondent for BBC News, and so should use capitals. If the byline offered a descriptor instead of a formal job title (Michael Buchanan is a/the social affairs correspondent for BBC News), capitals would not be appropriate.

This is something that a spell-checker cannot correct…

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 15

This one keeps coming round. This time, an email from Nectar makes an ambiguous remark:

Is it intended as a helpful warning (‘Get ready for kids! Summer holidays!’) which simply lacks closure in its first sentence? Or, more likely, should kids have an apostrophe and summer not be treated as a proper noun?

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 74

Today, proper nouns versus common nouns. First, a mangle:

Link: BBC News, ‘for god’s sake’

Nouns identify people, places and things. A common noun refers to general or non-specific items: a cat, a car, an uncle. All of these may be given individual names — Garfield, Ferrari Testarossa, Uncle Tom — but they simultaneously maintain their generality: Garfield is a cat, a Testarossa is a car, Tom is an uncle.

A proper noun relates to something specific, perhaps even unique; and thus it is often a name, whether of a person, a place, a product or whatever. As the above examples show, a proper noun is distinguished by the use of an initial capital letter. Hence a person might be named Rodriguez or Zhi Peng, even if that person is also more generally a father or an uncle. Specific places are also generic types: Tasmania and Goa are, respectively, states in Australia and India. Products follow a similar pattern: Sellotape is a brand of sticky tape; Hibiki is a brand of Japanese whisky.

Sometimes the same basic noun has common and proper variants, and this trips people up. For instance, the Greek deity Zeus and his Roman counterpart Jupiter have individual names, but are also (common noun) gods. However, Christianity, being monotheistic and thus not dealing in general gods, but a single god, converts that common noun into a proper noun: the Christians’ god is called God.

This rule applies even if the writer is an atheist: this is not a religious issue, but a grammatical one. After all, Zeus still has a capital Z even though no-one believes in him any more, and since only God is named God, it would be as incorrect to refer to Zeus and Jupiter as Gods, rather than gods, as it is to use the proper noun without an initial capital.

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 58

In addition to treating gods here as if it were a proper noun, this box from The Times concludes with a spelling error:

The Times, 4 June 2013, p. 5

Gender Bender or Sex Perplex, # 1

I rather giggled at this:

Link: Daily Telegraph, 'Why I’m waiting to pounce on the first round of divorcees'

once I'd read far enough into the subhead to work out that the headline really meant men.

Then I started wondering and did some research. I was surprised (and not very impressed) to find that the OED lists the word as is, without accents or (as a headword) a specific masculine form:

Link: OED, 'divorcee'

It's notable that three of the four examples of earliest use do show accents and the gender form appropriate to the context. The 'often' in the Etymology section also seems rather disingenuous (is that more or less often than not?), so that it isn't clear whether the OED entry is conflicting with the trend or following it. Chambers 21st Century Dictionary similarly ignores the accents and defines the word as 'someone who has been divorced'.

Checking some other dictionaries suggests that the term seems to cause unnecessary confusion. Collins English Dictionary (that's UK English) lists divorcée, but offers a gender-blurred definition ('a person, esp a woman, who has been divorced')* and an unsolvable circular puzzle in the search for divorcé:

Link: Collins English Dictionary, 'divorcé'

Conversely, the Collins American English Dictionary defines divorceé as 'a divorced woman' and mentions that this usage is specific to US (as opposed to UK) English; however, a search for divorcé results in the identical problem to that found in the Collins English Dictionary.

Merriam-Webster also keeps both the accent and the gender distinction ('a divorced woman'). While it takes some effort to find an entry for divorcé ('a divorced man'), it does exist, beneath noun- and verb-form entries for divorce; although the links to listings for divorcé defined 'for English-language learners' and 'for kids' lead instead to entries for divorce.

I'm aware, of course, that the English are famous for being Bad At Foreign Languages, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the barrier between divorcé and divorcée has been broken down, or that the acute accent has been lost, however regrettable, or even ridiculous, I might think it. Yet I remain surprised: after all, the English seem to have no difficulty in retaining the accent or gender-specific ending of words relating to the starting point of marriage, fiancé and fiancée.†


* and no full stop to end the abbreviation esp.
† OED, however, includes only the masculine form, noting in its etymology the French feminine form, but not apparently viewing it as appropriate to English usage. Chambers, conversely, includes both terms, distinguishing the definitions by by gender, and helpfully supplying the correct plural forms.

Now Try It In English, # 2

This was quoted in a Daily Telegraph report that was rather generously supplied with mangles:

Link: The Telegraph, 'we would crime it'

A trawl round the internet shows that, so far at least, this mangle seems not to be widespread, though it's not unique —

Link: Yahoo, 'Crime Referrance Number'

— and it may, of  course, be standard police jargon, as this clip from a PoliceUK.com forum suggests:

 Link: PoliceUK.com, 'crime it'

The slogan 'Stamp Out Crime' was once common. How about 'Stamp Out "Crime" As A Verb'?