Double-take, # 213

Rookie news reporters might usefully be given a list of potential pitfalls (as well as lessons in how to write effective and pithy headlines). This mangle should be on it:

Link: Southern Daily Echo, ‘Ringwood man taken to court for putting his feet on a train seat between Ellesmere Port and Hooton in Liverpool’

bye-law [+ headline]

Multimangle, # 26

The stone circle alluded to here certainly predates the apostrophe, and the name applied to it may well do, but the modern signage at the site does not and apostrophes consistently appear in the name on the official website (of which more tomorrow). It is also not apparent why the name here is treated as a plural when ‘The Rollright Stones’ — equally plural to the naked eye — takes singular verb forms on the website (where this name does not appear as a subject); nor why the superfluous singular subject noun in the first paragraph on the sign is treated as if plural:

Kings Men

Double-take, # 165

If you have to explain it, the analogy is surely pointless…

Link: Rugby Observer, 4 June, 2015, p. 17

extinct dodo