Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 200

Stilted syntax and a mangle, spotted by Dr Faustus:

Link: BBC News, ‘China shares fall more than 8% on growth concerns’

The mangled verb was subsequently changed — unfortunately to the simple present ‘saw’ rather than the past perfect (or pluperfect) ‘had seen’ that the context‘s temporal logic requires, and which seemed to be what the writer had originally intended.

seen for hd seen [+saw for had seen]

Double-take, # 189

Here is a major mismatch between the formulation of a question and the possible answers offered by Yorkshire Bank:

How long have you […]? [n year(s)] ago

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 199

From one renowned university to another… Today’s mangle, submitted by Dr Faustus, is down to staff, not students:

Link: The University of Bern (Universität Bern), Center [sic] for Cultural Studies, ‘The Structure of the Word [sic] Literature Study Programme’

word for world

Not Washed or Cooked, # 256

Pleaseproofread sends this (from which I’ve clipped the relevant section from the full poster), commenting: ‘What a mangle. I suppose we should be glad they spelt “medieval” correctly!’

acamdeic

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 98

This heinous and nonsensical grammatical error is becoming ubiquitous:

Link: BBC News, ‘Ancestors “had less sleep” than we do’

The comparison is not, as the construction of the final subordinate clause above suggests, between modern people’s lifestyles and ancient hunter gatherers, but between modern people’s lifestyles and the lifestyles of ancient hunter gatherers, which thus requires an apostrophe after ‘gatherers’.

lifestyles closely resemble ancient hunter gatherers [no apostrophe]

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 90

Via Dr Faustus, a pesky homophone in a theatre review:

Link: TimeOut, review of Our Country’s Good

course for coarse

You Cannot Be Serious, # 60

There are presently several versions of this meme, which appears on car-window decals and in other formats in addition to the ubiquitous online graphics. Most seem to contain this hideous mangle:

Link: Facebook, Janoskians

miss spell

You Cannot Be Serious, # 59

This product, with its tautologous description, spent much of this year in the remaindered display at the Rugby branch of Lidl:

decorative ornament

You Cannot Be Serious, # 58

Not the best word to misspell, nor the best place to misspell it:

proffessional [+ punctuation]

Double-take, # 188

So good you can do it twice, or intended to be a different course in Ancient History? (Don’t miss the unlikely-sounding title at the bottom of the list…)

Source: Northamptonshire County Council, ‘My County Council: Adult Learning Courses’, Autumn 2015—Spring 2016

duplicated course name (Ancient History – Egypt and Mesopotamia)

Double-take, # 187

An unfortunate homophonous mangle, submitted by Dr Faustus. The error has been corrected on the BBC’s webpage, but Google shows that echoes still remain:

duel for dual

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 89

A puzzling mangle, spotted by Des Pond of Slough:

Source: Rugby Observer (8 October 2015), p. 48, and online