A British woman has confessed to the attempted murder of her husband because of a spelling mistake on a forged ‘do not resuscitate’ note.
Douglas Patrick, a 72-year-old retired bus driver, originally fell ill at his south London home on December 25, 2013. As paramedics took him to hospital, Patrick’s wife Jacqueline handed them a note, which she claimed had been typed by her husband. The note requested that he be allowed to die in “dignaty”. Tests at Kings College Hospital London revealed that Douglas Patrick was suffering from anti-freeze poisoning. When this diagnosis was put to Jacqueline Patrick, she said he might have accidentally drunk a blue liquid.
On becoming involved in the case, the police asked Mrs. Patrick to spell the word “dignity”, and she repeated the spelling error from the note. Further investigation revealed that she had looked up anti-freeze poisoning on the Internet. Examination of her phone also revealed a series of text messages between her and her daughter Katherine in which they discussed three separate attempts to poison Douglas Patrick. Both women claimed in court they had been subject to years of domestic abuse from the husband and father.
Most spelling errors occur in more innocent circumstances, but this example shows how quickly the average person notices them. Spelling and grammatical errors on an Internet news feed can annoy readers and suggest a lack of professionalism. If you don’t want your search rankings to suffer because of this, make sure your news writing service is giving you error-free content.
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