Goodyear Dunlop restores full shits

Goodyear Dunlop restores full shits, at least according to the latest email newsletter from The Business Desk:


This one was spotted by my colleague Jo.

(Incidentally, I had a bit of a mishap with the last email newsletter I put together - I'll tell you about it when the embarrassment has gone down...)

'Time for cupid to get pratical'

Here's the start of a recent email newsletter from DIY Kyoto:




Whoops.

As part of my job, I sign off a weekly e-newsletter that gets sent out to around 20,000 people. The thought of missing a typo in the headline brings me out in a cold sweat.

(It'll probably happen next week now I've said that.)

Nursey nurse

The camera on my mobile phone is broken, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that a recruitment agency near my office is currently advertising for a "NURSEY NURSE".

At first I assumed this was a typo, but Googling 'Nursey Nurse' throws up the following vacancy on guardianjobs:


And Nursery World Jobs is carrying an advert for a "passionate nursey nurse":


I could go on, but it's past my beddy-byes.

Skin cancer caused by 'ultra violent sunlight', according to Telegraph.co.uk

According to an article published on Telegraph.co.uk today, skin cancer is caused by "ultra violent sunlight":



This one was actually spotted by Ed Yong and retweeted by my colleague Sue Proud - I just wanted to record it for posterity.

A Generation Hat is Ignored and Scorned

I did mention this great typo on Twitter yesterday but I think it's worth recording for posterity on the blog. You never know, the Daily Express might get around to fixing it at some point:



Daily Express: A Generation Hat is Ignored and Scorned

Typo: lime of communication

This is from recent raw copy:

They kept an open lime of communication all the way through the process.

What a brilliant fruit-based typo! Obviously, the writer meant "open line of communication".

Limes: Now we're talkin'

Typo: foul-lane carriageway

Stan from the excellent language blog Sentence first has sent in this scan from the Galway City Tribune, pointing out the typo at the end of the first par (as usual, click on the image to see a larger version):


He writes:

The road in question is a nice little jam-generator, so it's a particularly apt typo. I am a little conflicted, because it's a good newspaper, but amusement trumps politics again.

Thanks, Stan!

Green shoots of recovery

Here's a rather apposite typo or spelling mistake from recent raw copy:

However, those looking for green shoots of recovery should be weary

Of course, that final word should be 'wary' – probably.

Terry Pratchett and Peach Pie Street

The novelist – and knight – Terry Pratchett is a former sub, and so here at The Engine Room we follow his career with some interest (as regular readers of the blog will already know).

On Monday I spotted the following in the Metro free paper (click to see a larger version):


The body copy refers to 'Peace Pie Street' when the photo clearly shows 'Peach Pie Street'. Admittedly, they both make nice names.

(The sign pictured above is "another fantasy-inspired street sign" because the full Metro article also included a photo of 'Treacle Mine Road'. I decided not to scan in the entire thing, but you can see the other photo if you like in the web version of the story – which as I write this still includes the Peace/Peach mistake.)

Here are our previous Pratchett ponderings:

• Arise, sir Terry: former sub Pratchett is knighted

• Independent: Pratchett blooper

• The sign of the relieved canine

'Boarder crossing'

An amusing typo in recent raw copy:

The stop is packed with the kind of facilities that any sane driver and operator would want near one of the major boarder crossings in Europe

Who uses boarder crossings – children travelling back from boarding school, perhaps? Snowboarders on their way to the slopes?

Two premises, one premise

From recent raw copy (I've taken out the name of the manufacturer and its location):

On 12 February, 17 HGV trailers were seized at the site of a materials-handling equipment manufacturer and another nearby premise

It's probably just a typo but I really like that 'premise'. Two premises, one premise; it makes a sort of sense.

A problem with using syndicated news...

...is quality control.

Spotted this on the front page of the Mail.com website yesterday:


"Paris Hilton Robbed of $2 Million in Jewl Heist"?

Clicking on the headline took me to Hollywood Life.net - where the 'Jewl' typo obviously originated.

Hollywood Life.net seems to have picked up the story from the Los Angeles Times - which at least managed to spell its headline correctly.

Perhaps Mail.com should get its news from the LA Times rather than from Hollywood Life.net?

And I do appreciate the irony of writing about this story myself. Blogging can be so parasitic...

Word of the day: rifty

A strange word of the day today, in that I'm not sure who uses it, what it means or where it comes from. This copy was submitted to the subs' desk earlier this year by an English journalist based in the States:

It’s mid-morning on a bleak January Sunday in Detroit, Michigan, a city much favoured by producers of disaster films because they don’t need to spend much on dressing the set. It’s a rifty old place, boasting an ambient temperature somewhere south of very freezing

The context seems to suggest that rifty means 'cold', but I haven't come across it elsewhere before or since. My Concise OED and Google aren't much help either. Anyone out there use 'rifty' at all? Or did our writer just make a typo?

Detroit in winter is, apparently, rifty

Typo of the week: sweet

A simple typo (or possibly spelling mistake) made the subs' desk chuckle today. One of our writers submitted a feature containing the rhetorical question:

Would all your customers dessert you?

Maybe this is what it means to put someone on ice...

PS There's no picture to accompany this post because my "organization's Internet use policy restricts access at this time" to my favourite free image library, www.morguefile.com. As we also sometimes use Morguefile to source images for our publications, I can only imagine that this situation will be rectified shortly...


Update: It's rectified. So here is a picture of a dessert:

Typo of the week: ethic minorities

Yes, you did read that post title correctly: today is press day on our publication and we almost let through the clanger 'ethic minorities'. Not only that but it appeared twice in the same news story.

Fortunately for the subs, one of our eagle-eyed proofreaders spotted the mistake.

"Do ethic minorities come from Ethics?" I asked him. Unusually, he not only got my joke but laughed at it.

"Never mind the missing 'n', we should just drop the 'e'," he then said. So of course I told him not to be ethicist.

Words, eh?

Other engine rooms, other gremlins

One of our cherished freelancers spotted the following headlines on holdthefrontpage.co.uk:

• Arranging the death of a loved one isn't easy

• 12 die in 30 minutes as car bombers target Shite area

• Child sex field at family fun event

• Shoreham wind turbine talks

and, every sub's nightmare:

• Think of a headline
  56pt bold headline
  

Not to be left out, I must own up to a memorable typo at the end of a motor show preview some years ago: "See next week for a dull report". Yes, 'd' is right next to 'f' on the keyboard and spellcheckers, as we all know to our cost, don't pick up typos that make real words – but did that get me of the hook? Of course not.

Typo of the week: tea-hee

A small but amusing typo in a Times Online article about afternoon tea in London. Here's the relevant paragraph:

Afternoon tea is served daily at 2pm and 4pm (plus a noon sitting at weekends) and costs £31.50pp, or £38.50pp with a glass of bubby: book on 020 7420 2669. You've got until December 15, when the Savoy closes for a 16-moth, £100 million refurbishment.

It seems that 16 moths can do a surprising amount of damage...

Typo of the week: very fast food

The pub near to the office where Apus and I work is selling an all-day breakfast that includes "fired eggs". I presume they launch them at you from some sort of shell-firing cannon.

Odds and ends from the subs' desk

Just a few odds and ends from the past couple of weeks on the subs' desk.

1. A reporter wrote about the "problems that are ripe in the industry" - couldn't work out if this was an unfortunate typo or a misunderstanding of the phrase. Made me smile anyway. Obviously, he meant 'rife'.

2. A few nice tautologies that our writers supplied (and didn't make it into print):
Damning indictment
Expendable pawns
Panacea to cure all ills

Here's an expendable pawn

3. One writer talked about something being "increasingly critical" - not sure how that works!

4. Lastly, a couple of great phrases. One of our IT systems was described by a senior manager as "a lego set that is one big brick" - and in the same meeting he said that some of our company websites "look as though they haven't been designed, they've congealed"...

Now that's a 'damning indictment' if ever I heard one!