Double-take, # 231

The Mangling English email provider is now sending mangles direct to the inbox!

This mangle is related to one covered in more detail in December 2012. The construction here uses a personal pronoun (you) instead of the reflexive pronoun (yourself) that is needed to express the idea of performing (as the verb’s subject) an action on oneself (as the verb’s object).

An explanation, with examples of correct usage, can be found on the Oxford Dictionaries website.

Protect you and your loved ones

Mangling Meaning, # 32

Omitted pronoun results in ambiguity:

Link: The Times, ‘Lecturer wins £100,000 in costs and damages after being deceived over child’

his former wife and former boyfriend

Mangling Meaning, # 29

It would seem that over-excitement has once again affected The Independent’s ability to construct a coherent and grammatically-correct sentence. It was going so well, too:

Link: The Independent, ‘Richard Hammond “gutted” about Jeremy Clarkson sacking […]’

he left the possibility of him and May continuing without Clarkson

Double-take, # 74

This Guardian writer is horrified by implicit gender stereotyping in some primary school homework. It’s a fair concern; but the hideous confusion of pronouns seems a greater problem than the font face. Surely politically-correct grammar only has any claim to validity if it’s consistent?

Link: The Guardian, ‘Young children must be protected from ingrained gender stereotypes’

he … they; they … wife

Multimangle, # 14

Dr Faustus has sent this well-mangled paragraph from an Irish website, appropriately called Balls, announcing a competition to win Six Nations tickets ‘with some very special extras’. These extras include an erroneous homophone, and confusion about whether the pronoun representing a company should be in the neuter singular form or — conflicting with the singular verb used — made plural:

Link: Balls, ‘Win 4 Tickets To Ireland v England With Some Very Special Extras’

bank as its & their; there for their

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 71

I was invited to sign this petition some time ago:

Link: UK Government, e-petition, ‘Introduce mandatory noise complaint waivers […]’

The main mangle is innumerate for innumerable, which I’d not come upon before.

Note: the petition attained over 43,000 signatures. The government’s detailed response concludes that adequate legislation is in place to safeguard both venues and residents. The issue will be reconsidered should the number of petitioners reach 100,000.
innumerate for innumberable

You Cannot Be Serious, # 26

A soundbite from comments made by the Managing Director of Everards [sic] Brewery:

Link: BBC News, ‘Leicester Globe pub closes over anti-military rumours’

The Oxford Dictionaries webpage on ‘Personal pronouns’ observes that ‘[t]he correct use of personal pronouns is one of the areas of English usage that cause most difficulty’, but is concerned only with the erroneous usage of objective personal pronouns for subjective ones. The type of mangle above, where a reflexive pronoun is deployed as a subjective personal pronoun, isn’t mentioned there at all although, as this blog’s first post suggested, it is not uncommon.

Ourselves and the manager will

Double-take, # 101

The masculine pronoun in the final line here would be better replaced by the name —

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Andy Murray appears distracted as he surrenders Wimbledon title’

— but the key issue is superfluity: can one look upset other than visibly?*

* The writer seems enamoured of the phrase, which reappears — with other verbatim sections of this report — the following day in a follow-up piece.

looked visibly upset

Double-take, # 100

What can happen when a commentator on education fails to check for sense before posting:

Link: The Sunday Times (subscription access only), ‘Please, Sir! Why is my son reading a crisp packet for homework?’

The earlier text has indeed focussed on the writer’s son, but the paragraph directly before this one refers to both children, so the sudden reference to the daughter results in a nonsense. One might also raise an eyebrow at the final sentence since there has been only one recent plural noun and thus the pronoun they seems to be referring to the Doritos…

My daughter aged 11 is given three minutes of homework a week. One weekend he told me…

Double-take, # 92

This is well-meant, if oddly couched:

Link: Teach First

Since ‘a day’ relates to time, not place, to use where in this context is completely illogical.

The word child is grammatically both singular and neuter (cf. baby), biologically sexually unspecific and culturally non-gender-specific; it would thus be more correct and more logical to use the pronoun its to represent the noun. If it were being applied to a particular child in a particular context, it could be sexed accordingly. If the noun were made plural, their would make greater sense and be more grammatically sound; it might also increase the the statement’s emphasis. As it is, it reads rather as if their was agreeing in number with parents rather than child.

a day where; no child … their

Double-take, # 91

Today, a detached relative pronoun from the BBC:*

Link: BBC News, ‘Renfrew tyre fire […]’

The contributor, Des Pond of Slough, commented: ‘Glasgow — it’s miles bigger.’**

* This report has been changed significantly, but a Google search offers echoes of the original.

** A reference to the campaign to promote the city in the 1980s , with the slogan:

Link: Wikipedia, ‘Glasgow’s miles better’

black smoke […] drifting across the city which could be seen for miles

Double-take, # 86

The article/noun disagreement below indicates inadequate proofreading (reprehensible in a private language school extolling its quality and professionalism), while the representation of the noun school by the pronoun their mangles both grammar and logic:

Source: CESA Languages Abroad | Learn French in Nice, France

The two adjectives — and this may well reflect a personal preference — seem to be the wrong way round. As it stands, the text makes it sound as if native is a language, but surely the distinction is not between being a native speaker and a French native speaker (since people other than French nationals can have French as their first language), but between being a French speaker and a native French speaker.

a French native speakers

Double-take, # 81

Dr Faustus sent this in because of a missing relative pronoun:

Link: Wikipedia, ‘Chivalric romance’

This mangle originates in a failure to harmonize the quotation, an error often seen in the work of some students, who merrily cut-and-paste text from the Internet into their essays without thinking to check whether the new material fits the immediate context syntactically — or to proofread the work later — and to adapt one or other if not.

It’s also notable that the plural pronoun that opens the second sentence (which is the second sentence of the entry, not just the extract) has no logical antecedent since no plural noun appears in the first sentence. Sometimes it is difficult to connect such orphaned pronouns with their subject noun. In this case, it is apparent what ‘They’ refers to, although it is strictly erroneous and also inelegant, and may require the reader to revisit the first sentence for clarification.

Writing should be accurate and coherent, with a smooth narrative flow. Readers should not have to proofread as they go to make the writing make sense.

missing relative pronoun; orphaned pronoun

Double-take, # 70

I’ve provided a bit of a run-up to this so it’s apparent quite how confusing the use of pronouns is:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Bampton: infamy in the Prime Minister’s back yard’

which he?

You Cannot Be Serious, # 24

Unhelpful use of pronouns:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Bampton: infamy in the Prime Minister’s back yard’

Which ‘he’?
unclear pronoun, he with two male subject

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 26

I’ve noticed before that Dr Faustus is very fond of a catastrophic apostrophe. He’s submitted this one, which he found on the menu of a restaurant in London:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 98

This has been doing the rounds on Facebook:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 78

A failure to spellcheck or proofread, augumented by pronoun-induced ambiguity:

Link: The Times (subscription access only), ‘Forced marriage to be a crime’

Multimangle, # 2

A regular mangle plus an issue covered last December:

Link: BBC News, Leicester, ‘Leicester Globe pub closes over anti-military rumours’

Everards’ managing director with the shifting pronouns supported by one of the Beeb’s apostropheless reporters.

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 23

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