You Cannot Be Serious, # 34

Lorenzo Smerillo has contributed what he fairly describes as a ‘headacheline’:

Link: The New York Times, ‘Same-Sex Pairs in Florida Say Jubilant “I Dos” [sic]’

‘I Dos’ [as plural of ‘I do’]

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 161

Mangling at the BBC… again:

Source: BBC News for Smartphone, and online, ‘Samsung forecasts a 37% drop in quarterly profits’

manufactures for manufacturers

Not Washed or Cooked, # 200

A company that cannot correctly spell the name of the product it is marketing seldom inspires confidence in the product’s quality or the company’s competence. If the company is going to keep repeating the product’s name in an advertisement as part of its selling technique, the name needs to be correct every time. This mangle comes from my inbox:

AdStipper for AdStripper

Double-take, # 124

It is hard to tell exactly what can have happened to this supposed television programme information, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

The mangle here is, of course, ‘assistances’, although the whole thing turns out to be a mangle since the episode actually shown in this slot was from a much later series, in which the Avengers were John Steed and Mrs Emma Peel, not from the original 1961 series, which begins with a focus on a character called Dr David Keel, with assistance from the (definitely neither female nor plural) John Steed, who gradually takes over the lead role.

assistances for assistant/assistants

Not Washed or Cooked, # 199

Although apparently based in Costa Rica, today’s source blog is written in English. Given its subject matter, you’d have expected the writers to have had practice in spelling the main mangle here. Both errors would have been identified by a standard English spelling dictionary:

Link: Eco Preservation Society, ‘Costa Rica’s Harlequin Frog […]’

extict for extinct; florish for flourish

Not Washed or Cooked, # 198

This website seems to have had a facelift since I found today’s mangle on it, and both its site banner and its page navigation have been changed (and the latter doesn’t actually work properly any more), but the mangle remains:

Link: MathProblems.info, ‘Burried treasure problem’

I’ve linked above to the page as I found it on 10 December, 2014. For anyone wanting to find the mathematical problem, it is number 149 in the index.

burried for buried

Not Washed or Cooked, # 197

From last month’s news:

Link: The Greeneville Sun, ‘Former Tobacco Warehouse Leveled In Early-A.M. Balze [sic]’

A similar typographical error lurks here, in a news item from 2013:

Link: The Telegraph, ‘Firefighters tackle 'volcano' balze [sic] as mulch fire burns in Maryland’

balze for blaze

Not Washed or Cooked, # 196

Two versions of a mangled breadcrumb that appeared on the Guardian’s webpages last week:

attle for battle

Not Washed or Cooked, # 195

This breadcrumb was doing the rounds on Facebook last autumn:

Source: breadcrumb link to Latin Times, ‘Is Drinking Wine Better Than Going To The Gym? […]’

cmplex

Double-take, # 123

This mangle is surprisingly widespread and comes in at least these two variants, but there may be more. The first example is the more common error:

Link: NorthPole.com, Craft Cottage, ‘Poke a Dot Luminaries’

The second is less common, but not hard to find:

Link: Volcom.com, ‘Poker Dot Gloves’

The Oxford English Dictionary shows a pronunciation difference between UK- and US-English:

Spelling errors are thus more likely to be American. The term must, of course, be taught. If the l is not sounded, the correct spelling cannot be deduced from the sound; nor can it be inferred through logic, for, as the Online Etymology Dictionary points out, the connection between polka dots and the polka is arbitrary: the dance was popular and it became fashionable to append the name randomly.

An American company produces a series of ‘Poke-a-Dot’ books, intended to teach counting to young children:

Link: InnovativeKids, Our Products, ‘Poke-A-Dot’

The series title is a great pun; but a pun can be fun and effective only if it is understood as a pun. In practice, this series title is likely to consolidate the misspelling, and it is not impossible that the title is itself based on a misunderstanding of the term.

poke-a-dot; poker dot

You Cannot Be Serious, # 33

Sometimes mangles appear in the supermarket queue next to me, as recently happened in Lidl… This mangle seems to arise from misunderstanding the name of the second added ingredient:

Peach and Passion. Fruit Yoghurt

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 160

Beginning the year as we mean to go on with this mangle, spotted by Des Pond of Slough, who comments: ‘I wonder just how thrilled she is…’

Source: BBC homepage (http://www.bbc.co.uk/), 31 December, 2014

The caption in the box above also seems to be missing some vital punctuation…
Dam Joan Collins