Another helping of misprints and syntactic fatuity from Much too Funny for Words by Denys Parsons ( 1985)

It is generally agreed that human beings acquire sleeping sickness from biting flies

The Pioneer.

It is estimated that about 16 foxes were shot or killed by the hounds

FOR SALE. Baker’s business, good trade, large oven, present owner been in it for seventeen years.

FATHER OF TEN SHOT

________________

MISTAKEN FOR RABBIT

Headline in New York paper.

What is more beautiful for the blonde to wear for formal dances than while tulle? My

Answer—and I’m sure you will agree with me—is ‘ Nothing’.

Worcester ( Massachusetts) Evening Gazette.

Mr Lloyd George, patron saint of the Liberal Party, was a very astute gentleman with both ears glued to the ground. Naturally, he could not see very far ahead.

Scottish paper

A representative said that people saw in the movement a real big octopus which would put its ring around them and swallow them up.

Essex paper

This criticism is not open, as Britishers would be, and consequently is difficult to nail down, but, lie a snake in the grass, is whispered behind a hand which covers a sneering face.

Letter in Rugeley Mercury

In the first important utterance of the Chairman of the Board, he has, so to say, thrown the Board overboard and ploughed his own canoe.

Ceylonese Paper.

Said a Farnborough shopkeeper, ‘ The Council is pulling the bread and butter from under our feet’.

Farnborough Paper.

The great white elephant which is slowly emerging from the chrysalis at the end of Sepoy Lines has yet to be opened.

Malayan Paper

The rich man’s motor may sow the seed of the class war, but the landlord’s horse yielded the milk of human kindness.

Bradford Paper.

‘Gentlemen, we will have nothing to do with it; it is but the thin end of a white elephant.’

Hampshire Town Councillor.

Speaking at Mablethorpe Council meeting, Councillor P. Thomas said: ‘ This Council is fiddling while Mablethorpe is settling under the pounding hoofs of motorists.’

Local Paper.

Fortunately for the workmen the glass fell perpendicularly, for had it fallen vertically, the accident in all probability would have proved serious.

Continue reading →

Some little-known scientific and mathematical facts

A circle is that part of the theatre which has the most expensive seats

Water is turned into a viper when it gets too hot

The logarithm of a given number is the number of times the given number must be squared in order that the given number may be equal to this number.

To collect fumes of sulphur hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube

An eight-sided figure is called an octagon because an octopus has eight legs.

Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state.

Chlorine is obtained from common salt by electrocution.

Hydrogen may be obtained by applying a lighted taper to a jar inverted in water.

A therm is a germ that creeps into the gas meter and causes rapid consumption.

The Specific Gravity of a substance is the ratio between the weight of one gram of the substance and the weight of one gram of water.

An obtuse angle has no sides equal.

Distilled water is water that has been filtered or put through blotting paper to keep the dirt out. Continue reading →

Errors of the educated

Found in Speeches and Toasts by Leslie F Stemp ( 1952) is a chapter on ‘’certain besetting carelessnesses of dictum from which even our high-brows are not immune”.

Although none of the speeches or toasts in the book are as funny as Reginald Perrin’s alcohol induced peroration at the National Fruit Convention, or Hugh Grant’s best man speech In ‘Four Weddings’, Mr Stemp, a barrister for the Gas Board, does provide both mildly amusing and serious examples of speeches for most occasions. And although many remain hopelessly dated, as his use of the word ‘high-brow’ suggests, the advice he offers on grammatical errors remains useful today. Here are some of my favourite examples:

“That” and “which”.

It is wrong to use the relative pronouns” that” and ”which” as if they were interchangeable, and to be varied to meet the demands of euphony. Their provinces are distinct; the boundaries between them well marked. Every defining clause whose antecedent is not a person should be introduced that that, every such clause that adds new matter by which. The test of defining new clauses is: would the suppression of them render the statement untrue? If so it is a defining clause. “We have rejected all the cases that arrived sea-damaged”. Omit the clause and what remains ios a falsehood: all the cases were not rejected: the sound were accepted.” We have received your statement, which is receiving our attention.” Even if this sentence were cut short after “statement”, if would be true. The first sentence, therefore, contained a defining clause, properly introduced by “that” , and the second an added clause , preceded, correctly, by “which”. Continue reading →

English translation howlers

From Funny or Die site (thanks)

From the Peter Haining Archive. These are taken from a collection compiled by Thomas Cook employees in Nottingham during the period 1987 – 95:

‘You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid ‘
Notice in Japanese hotel

‘Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar’
Announcement in Norwegian cocktail lounge.

‘The lift is being fixed. During that time we regret you will be unbearable’
Notice in a Bucharest hotel lobby.

‘The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid’
Notice in a Yugoslav hotel.

‘Our wines leave you with nothing to hope for ‘.
Swiss restaurant menu.

‘Ladies may have fit upstairs’
Outside a Hong Kong tailors

‘Special today—no ice cream’
Swiss mountain inn

‘Order your summer suit. Because of big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation’
In a Rhodes tailors.

‘We take your bag and send it in all directions’
Copenhagen airline ticket

‘Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists’
Hong Kong dentist

[R.R.]

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