I know that proof readers no longer exist at newspapers, so perhaps it is the same with publishing houses. I catch several errors each week in printed matter.

I read recently about a 'walking holiday' where the author described his boots as having worn-out souls.

Vee....that almost falls into the category of "Eggcorns" where the malapropism is oddly applicable.

Acorns --- eggcorns

Moot point --- mute point

Don't get me started....

And then there is auto correct where the machine thinks it knows more than you do. My personal hate is mantle for mantel. Our Saturday paper has a house of the week feature that almost always involves mantles.

Or . . . the play Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill written as Morning . . . (see some amazon sites)

Bon, I see errors like that all the time! Especially in online news stories. Ugh.

Donna

I sent an e-mail to the Content Editor of our local newspaper pointing out that error and wondering if there are any actual editors left in the business.

Many years back I sent off an e-mail to a local newspaper writer who told the story of a deer jumping through the window of a local restaurant and " ransacking" it.

My plea: If you are going to write something which will be published can you at least use the correct words?

I collect stuff like this in a commonplace book. The highest volume of malapropisms I have collected comes from online newspapers, while the funniest errors of all kind tend to come from radio and it's a draw between TV subtitles and newspapers as to which has the worst translation errors. I don't bother with bad spelling unless it results in something funny.

I rarely listen to the radio, but one particular program I tune into on my way to work has a high yield of funny and/or infuriating messed-up idioms. Many of these are eggcorns, so they sound plausible while being incorrect. There are several idioms and proverbs in my language where an eggcorn has superseded an original where a word has fallen out of general use and is no longer understood by the majority of people.

Interesting ......Netla, can you share a few of those idioms using eggcorns ?

My all time favorite edit error was in our tiny newspaper's obituary section. It still makes me laugh. "He is survived by Wide Barbara". I could only hope his wife was not overweight.

Netla, closed-captioning in the US is full of typos, many of them very funny!

It's not really a mistake, but one time we saw a video of a horse race in which one of the horses was named Hoof Hearted. Of course, HH was in the lead and the announcer was excitedly saying his name over and over. It came out sounding like "who f@rted". It was hilarious!

Donna

aaaaaaand........here's the video !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqj2hkbDnyM

Loved it! I'm sure that horse was given it's name for just that very purpose.

Thanks, Bon! A classic video, to be sure. :)