Apostrophe catastrophe, # 65

Singer-songwriter Ian Bourne posted to Facebook this extract from an unsolicited invitation he’d been sent, and kindly agreed to let me use it on the blog:

The first paragraph’s apostrophe catastrophe has a stylistically and grammatically dubious set of supporters, notably the arbitrary and sometimes bizarre capitalization throughout the text, the odd use of inverted commas in the second paragraph, and the multiple exclamation marks after ‘NOW’.

haven’t; random capitalization; our ‘one time’ registration

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 64

Following on from last Thursday’s heinous mangle in which a Rugby librarian had copied a book’s title, but added an apostrophe, here’s the Simply Entertainment cataloguer copying a programme title, but excising the apostrophe clearly and correctly shown on the DVD box:

Source: Simply Entertainment, August 2014, p. 40

Devils Whore

Double-take, # 116

A missed-out word results in gibberish:

Link: Coventry Telegraph, ‘The £65m cuts no-one in Coventry will be able to escape’

to hurt almost single person

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 63

Des Pond of Slough finds a hideous mangle in the window of Rugby Library:

Coal Merchant’s of Rugby

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 62

A governmental object lesson in why English teaching needs to be improved:

Link: Twitter, DCMS

your businesses broadband

Not Washed or Cooked, # 182

Kicking off Mangling English’s Christmas is this gem from Phil Vivian, who comments: ‘My good deed for the day: pointing out to the supervisor in Tesco that they might not sell too many of these. That said, I suppose that they could be targeting a very specific type of customer, perhaps one contemplating marriage with a pre-nuptial agreement as part of the deal.’

financee

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

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 61

So many correct plurals; but then it all went wrong:

Link: Rugby Observer, 7 August 2014, p. 6, and online

conservatory’s

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 60

Ouch!

Source: Simply Entertainment, August 2014, p. 5

All Our Yesterday’s

You Cannot Be Serious, # 31

A barely-believable mangle from the smartphone of Dr Faustus proves to be faithfully reproduced on the main website:

Cf. online: PinkNews, ‘Twickenham rugby fans accused […]’

homohpboic

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 65

‘There’s a mangle,’ said Des Pond of Slough, ‘they’ve put Devizes by mistake.’ That was how I heard it, but actually…

Link: Rugby Observer, 16 October 2014, advertising wrapper

… it turned out not to be Devizes for devises, but devises for devices — more heinous, of course, since they aren’t actually homophonic.

devises for devices

Double-take, # 115

A still-uncorrected error from last Friday’s online Express:

Link: Express, ‘Shoppers ordered to kneel on floor […]’

Mo Juste, who spotted the mangle, comments: ‘A despicable crime, indeed, but they’ll probably slip through the net quite easily.’

The report contains several other oddities, such as describing the malefactors as ‘balaclava-bearing’, which implies that they were carrying rather than wearing the headgear; and reporting an eyewitness as suggesting that the culprits ‘psyche [sic] themselves up on adrenaline’.

viscous thugs; psyche for psych; balaclava-bearing