Not Washed or Cooked, # 71

The Telegraph offers a wince-inducing alternative spelling in its search routine:

Link: The Telegraph, search for ‘personal independence payments’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 70

Dr Faustus spotted this error on the map of Milestones Museum of Living History in Basingstoke:

Link: Milestones Museum of Living History, map

As I was putting this entry together, a sentence came to me, complete with erroneous spelling. I couldn’t think where it came from, but an online search found a familiar item, the duplicate of a mug my father was given one Christmas:

Link: eBay Australia, ‘JAPAN MUG’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 89

This extract from the Kenilworth Weekly News was sent in by Dr the Homie Smith:*

Link: Kenilworth Weekly News, ‘Conservative tastes as PM boosts business’

* He says Crustum’s bread is excellent.

Double-take, # 26

Here is the rather perplexing opening line from a (fairly) recent advertisement by Morrisons:

Definitions from the Oxford Dictionaries website show that this is indeed a tautology:

Link: Oxford Dictionaries, ‘fillet’

Link: Oxford Dictionaries, ‘debone’

It may be, of course, that in fishmongers’ jargon, debone and fillet relate to different actions,* but of course the advertisement is aimed at the general reader…

* Does anyone know?

Not Washed or Cooked, # 69

Another from Bob Godiva:

Not Washed or Cooked, # 68

This is Amazon’s description of Bad Language by Lars Andersson and Peter Trudgill, a book about poor use of English:

Link: Amazon.co.uk | Lars Andersson and Peter Trudgill, Bad Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 24

So many publications, so little time… My latest discovery is The Christian Post, and a recent headline made ambiguous by the absence of a (clearly required) apostrophe:

Link: The Christian Post | CPOpinion, ‘God Is Still Not Dead Despite Authors Claims’

Not Washed or Cooked, # 67

Worrying spelling from an establishment closely connected with education:

Link: ‘Education’, Innovative Media, Research and Commercialization Center (IMRC Center), University of Maine

Not as obvious as this though:

Link: Education Oppertunity Centre, Syracuse, NY

repeated on an alumna’s public-access entry on LinkedIn:

Link: LinkedIn, ‘Bennie Mae Edwards-Rucker’

and all over the Internet:

Link: Google, search term “Education Oppertunity Center”

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

Dr Faustus was targeted on Facebook with the following advertisement:

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 88

Bob Godiva has submitted possibly the most extreme example (swiftly corrected) we’ve had of why proofreading is important:

It’s not clear why the designer was so determined to keep repeating the product description, but it really emphasizes the error.

Multimangle, # 1

Not the first blog entry with multiple mangles, but one that justifies the creation of a new general category.

Extracted from the website for Heritage Open Days 2013:

Link: Heritage Open Days 2013, Cemex

The ‘ot’ obviously never met a spell-checker, a comma is needed after both tower, since there’s only one, and Church, while Mathews lacks both a possessive apostrophe and a second t.

To be fair, the church’s name presents a challenge elsewhere, including on its own community website, where it’s shown variously as 

Link: m2o Rugby

and

In the first instance, the abbreviation of Saint should not take a full stop since the word is not curtailed (in contrast to the St. used to represent Street). Instead, letters are missing from the middle, but it’s more usual simply to write St, rather than the strictly correct S’t (compare foc’s’le for forecastle), which looks both unwieldy and a little silly.

Both entries fail on possessive apostrophes. One has made no attempt to include any, while the latter correctly deals with St Oswald, but ignores the need to present St Matthew’s name in the possessive form. (Unlike Fortnum and Mason or Morecambe and Wise, the saints are not in a permanent partnership; thus if one requires an apostrophe, the other does too.)

The most sensible option, of course, would be to call it The Church of St Matthew and St Oswald: this is less of a tongue-twister and likely to involve less spitting when said aloud, and it removes the need for anyone to grapple with grammar when writing it down. This version is indeed what it says on the sign outside the church, and what the Archbishops’ Council’s A Church Near You website calls it, except for the hedging of bets when abbreviating saint:

Link: A Church Near You, St Matthew and St Oswald