You Cannot Be Serious, # 72

These come via Gary Hazell. The top screenshot is taken of the company’s website (where one of the many mangles has now been corrected), and the other from its Facebook page. A cynic might say the copy had been rushed out to take advantage of circumstances:

Link: PhilosophyFootball.com, ‘Muhammad Ali’

Link: Facebook, PhilosophyFootball, 4 June, 2016, 10:42

WE REMEMBER £5 FROM EACH SHIRT, solidatirty, dinated, suppoters, anti-war, pro Civil Rights; persoinal

Double-take, # 239

Dr Faustus spotted this in his local EE shop:

Apologies’; shut from 5:30 tonight we apologise […]; To Our Valued Customers

Double-take, # 233

Spotted, Dr Faustus says, rather vaguely, ‘in my local pharmacy’:

hygene

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 106

It’s not entirely clear what relevance being a dog owner has here, the concept of a canine facial seems bizarre, and the capitalization is inconsistent — and that is all in addition to the mangle!

nails for claws [dog groomer]

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 114

Dr Faustus found this on a piece of clothing in H&M and was, he says, quite tempted to buy it, but for the apostrophe catastrophe which he could not countenance wearing. The inexplicable dash and the odd motto beneath the main text also offer good reasons to leave it on the rack:

world’s; New— York City; the island of manhattan | city of superlatives

Double-take, # 218

The penultimate seasonal mangle of Easter 2016 comes from Waitrose (and has been sitting in the ‘seasonal’ folder since last year, awaiting its moment). It’s hard to tell whether it is a typographical slip or an attempt to make an unfamiliar word logical:

Link: Waitrose Media Centre, ‘Sinmel Cake’

Sinmel cake

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 225

Via Dr Faustus, a sad juxtaposition of vaunting and mangling:

Link: Unreal City Audio, ‘About Us’ page

a cathartic voyages

Multimangle, # 43

In amongst this bunch of mangles is one appropriate for St David’s Day:

Link: Chadwicks flowers, ‘English indoor dafodills’

dafodills; Chadwicks; Valentines Day; Mothers Day; foliages

Double-take, # 215

An initial capital might help, replacing ‘your’ with ‘a’ would be better; doing both and inserting a relevant noun (‘degree’, perhaps, or ‘course’) would be best of all…

your master’s dissertation

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 216

Dr Faustus, still unimpressed by Waterstones abandoning its apostrophe, doesn’t think much of its staff’s proofreading abilities either:

for those can attend

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 107

Spotted by Dr Faustus in the shop rebranded as Waterstone’s in 2010 and then, in 2012, re-rebranded (or possibly un-rebranded) back to Waterstones. Apostrophe confusion is clearly a core concept at the company:

CV’s

Not Washed or Cooked, # 281

Here is a pair of mangles on a seasonal theme. The first can be found on the website of Cotswold & Stuart, specialists in philately:

Link: Cotswold & Stuart, ‘Royal Mail Christmas Panomime Minisheet FDC’

This one (with unavoidably small text — click it to enlarge a little) comes from the press:

Link: Donegal Daily, ‘Dwarfs group’

pantoime; panomime

Double-take, # 203

At some point in the last year or so, someone at eBay (or possibly ebay: both can be found on the company’s webpages these days) altered this word in the email notification template from the correct spelling to this mangle, ignoring the company’s own advice on checking spelling:

matche

Not Washed or Cooked, # 272

Ryan McCarthy found this mangle on Amazon:

Link: Amazon UK

clork for clock

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 104

Earlier this year, John Holloway received an apostrophe catastrophe by email:

camera’s for cameras

Not Washed or Cooked, # 270

Unqualified ‘quality’ further undermined by typographical error:

Link: QualitySolicitors, ‘My employer has not paid my wages – is there anything I can do?’

financil

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 102

The apostrophe’s absence seems somehow worsened by the inclusion of a possessive intensifier:

Link: Halfords, ‘Winter Demister Bundle’

your vehicles own heating system

Singular or Plural? # 17

Someone in Sainsbury’s sign-writing department seems confused about grammatical number, and varying the order of the nouns doesn’t help:

chicken and beef is; beef and chicken is

Double-take, # 192

Just Liam found a multilingual mangle in Tesco, and comments: ‘Maybe they’re taking their motto of “every little helps” a bit too seriously.’ At least the noun is plural in the French version, but ‘en poudre’ implies dried into powder form (for instance, lait en poudre is powdered milk), which is clearly not the case with noodles, and where the apostrophe comes from is anyone’s guess. Then there’s the rather odd adjective beneath, whose meaning is not very clear: 

The prefix ‘un-’ (to indicate that they haven’t been) would seem more appropriate than ‘non-’; but the point is superfluous, since it seems unlikely that fried noodles could be dried.

Dried Noodle; noodles en poud’re; non-fried

Not Washed or Cooked, # 258

Another from Dr Faustus. With these prices the centre will soon be able to afford a spell-checker!

tarriff