You Cannot Be Serious, # 75

From Dr Faustus:

Source: Just Like Us

homophic

Double-take, # 248

The mangled headline is just the beginning:

Link: Rugby Adverttiser

[headline but no report, or pictures, or anything]

Multimangle, # 56

This does not reflect well on the writer, the education system, or an industry that largely seems to have decided that sub-editors aren’t necessary:

Link: SomersetLive, ‘Crocs are Bad for Your Health Say Experts, as Patients Complain of Heel Pain on Daily Basis’

footwear that are Crocs; [punctuation]

Double-take, # 247

At a time when every online report and article must be illustrated, however unpictorial the subject, here is a recent (and mangled) attempt to represent visually the news report ‘Sheffield Posties to Go on Strike this Weekend’:

Link: The Star (Sheffield)

caption (& picture of a hand) ‘posting many letters to red british [sic] postbox on street’, illustrating postal workers strike

Not Washed or Cooked, # 313

Someone recommended to me The Disappearance, an eight-part French thriller shown on BBC4. The subtitles came with a glaring mangle:

Epiosde

Double-take, # 246

What a difference a hyphen can — or would — make!

Link: North Devon Journal

Pram pushing Barnstaple mother ‘so drunk she couldn't stand’

Spellchecking Is Never Enough, # 232

‘CitizenChip’, who might well hide behind a pseudonym, has mistaken the prepositional verb crack down on for the noun crackdown, both of which take the preposition on, and follows this up with some dubious syntax and a typographical error:

Link: GloucestershireLive

crack down for crackdown; of for on; area for area; [syntax]

Double-take, # 245

This is not an adjective:

Link: South Hams Gazette, ‘Dog Alerts Dartmouth Family to Fridge-freezer Blaze’

hero for heroic

Multimangle, # 55

Another unsolicited email, with a rather naive subject line, from the inbox of Dr Faustus:

write you; no for not; 30mins; if you have interest in know what the job entails [omitted articles; comma splices]

Double-take, # 244

It isn’t clear whether the mangle in this breadcrumb, leading to a report whose headline uses the correct word, is typographical or grammatical, but its first word is definitely not a noun:

Link: Hereford Times, ‘Hereford Teenager Jailed for Online Sex Offences’

Teenage jailed

Double-take, # 243

A mangled headline precedes and presages further mangling. In fact, the adverb in the report’s first paragraph, flagged by red text, is included as a variant form by Merriam-Webster, though not by British-English dictionaries. The report’s second paragraph is included here only to add colour:

Link: Daily Record and Sunday Mail

Colvend women accident sets fire; accidently

Multimangle, # 54

Dubious grammar and punctuation:

Link: The Scotman, ‘Scots Students Losing out to English at Home Universities’

number … are + punctuation