Apostrophe catastrophe, # 117

Spotted on Clarendon Road, Watford:

11 minutes walk

Double-take, # 237

Dr Faustus says: ‘Spotted in a fire vehicle displayed at my local primary school.’

when when

Double-take, # 233

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

hygene

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

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

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 84

Des Pond of Slough went to Donington Historic Festival and came back with a mangle:

bin’s for bins

Handritten, # 5

Spotted by Just Nick in Royal Leamington Spa:

Alcohol off liecense

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 71

Spotted at a car show last summer. The first line dealt correctly with its apostrophe, but then it all went wrong:

my minis the dogs bollocks

Handritten, # 4

From the archive of Dr Faustus, who spotted it at a pub in Sandhurst late last year:

colesalaw

Double-take, # 121

Dr Faustus has sent in this staff circular from the Co-op:

hard work work

Not Washed or Cooked, # 183

Another from Dr Faustus, this seems include all necessary details:

World Gold Counsil

Not Washed or Cooked, # 181

This can presently be seen among similar (if unmangled) home-produced announcements decorating the shopfront of a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine in South Kensington:

specilise

Not Washed or Cooked, # 177

Another excellent find by Dr Faustus, this mangle was on display at the Tudor House, Southampton:

Catherdrals

Not Washed or Cooked, # 173

Spotted in the States by Josh Polchar:

no traspassing

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 55

Evie McDermott has been to Alton Towers, where she was struck by the absence of apostrophe in the declarative announcement on this sign. Then there’s the completely random use of capital letters…

worlds most intense…; random capitalization

Not Washed or Cooked, # 169

Spotted in Rugby by Des Pond of Slough:

Clearly composed on a word-processor, clearly not spell-checked or grammar-checked… Let’s hope the selected applicant will be police-checked…

no expereriance nessacery; childrens

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 54

Not a harmonized list:

Adult dinners; Child’s dinners

Double-take, # 88

These might be less startling with hyphens:

Source: Lavatory block at Cotswold Wildlife Park, Burford

unisex baby changing rooms

Multimangle, # 6

Ross McGregor found this sign in a branch of Tesco:

Due to Chillers Break down stock in these chillers are not suitable for use any more and is removed. We are trying to get this problem fix as soon as possible and are really sorry for any incontinence caused. Management

Not Washed or Cooked, # 154

This heinous error can be found in the main library of the University of Warwick:

The main mangle is joined by the lower-case z in the second line, which should be capitalized to harmonize with the other classification letters shown.

refernce