Double-take, # 232

This mangled text was found on Oxford University’s website by Arina, who comments: ‘It’s hilarious that this comes from the description of a module on editing.’

Link: University of Oxford Language Centre, ‘English for Academic Studies’

Repetition of copy: ‘Editing your Thesis with Corpora is a short (12-hour) course designed for doctoral students who are at the transfer stage […] This 12-hour intensive course is designed for doctoral students who have passed the transfer stage […].’

You Cannot Be Serious, # 68

It was going so well, but then the writer chose an adjectival construction instead of negating the verb, and it all went horribly wrong…

Source: Times Higher Education, 2253 (5—11May, 2016), p. 4

drones can carry only a small payload, let alone […]

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 105

The writer knows what the right word is, as it appears in the final paragraph here, but the word used in second paragraph makes little sense, as Dr Faustus observes. There’s a hyphen missing too:

Link: BBC News, ‘Britons with “wrong passport” stopped from travelling to US’

biometric trip [for chip]; old style passport

Double-take, # 231

The Mangling English email provider is now sending mangles direct to the inbox!

This mangle is related to one covered in more detail in December 2012. The construction here uses a personal pronoun (you) instead of the reflexive pronoun (yourself) that is needed to express the idea of performing (as the verb’s subject) an action on oneself (as the verb’s object).

An explanation, with examples of correct usage, can be found on the Oxford Dictionaries website.

Protect you and your loved ones

Double-take, # 230

The writer of this report seems not to understand that a whole word does not work the same way as its abbreviation, and needs a space:

Link: Express, ‘Private Contractors Cost NHS, and Taxpayers, Millions in Botched Operations’

£9million, £3.2million, £33million, £52million; failures […] has

Double-take, # 229

Some time ago, Dr Faustus submitted this shot of a mangle from the printed Radio Times (edition unknown). A search on its website suggests that this mangle occurs quite often in the publication:

The ‘i before e’ issue was addressed by Mangling English in December 2012.

fiesty

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 104

A pesky homophone and a bilingual slip, via Des Pond of Slough:

Source: French Property News, 301 (March 2016), p. 57

electoral roll; vehicule for vehicle

Double-take, # 228

Not a description that guarantees effectiveness:

Link: Playepub, ‘Translator’

tanslate

Not Washed or Cooked, # 307

It would seem that The Guardian still has no spell-checking facilities:

Link: The Guardian, ‘Berlin’s Government Legislates against Airbnb’

officals

You Cannot Be Serious, # 67

This Telegraph report was scrapped and its address now redirects visitors to a page about bookies’ odds for bets on the weather for Easter 2016, although echoes of the original text still remain online. At the time this snapshot was taken, however, it seemed that the writer was already on vacation:

haolidaymakers

The Wrong Word Entirely, # 103

Dr Faustus is unimpressed by what he calls an ‘insensitive mangle’ (though the insensitivity arguably begins with the headline, and ‘insensitive’ seems too generous a term):

Link: BBC News, ‘Memorial Service for Ben Nevis Death Climber Tim Newton’

exhibitions for expeditions

Apostrophe catastrophe, # 114

Dr Faustus found this on a piece of clothing in H&M and was, he says, quite tempted to buy it, but for the apostrophe catastrophe which he could not countenance wearing. The inexplicable dash and the odd motto beneath the main text also offer good reasons to leave it on the rack:

world’s; New— York City; the island of manhattan | city of superlatives