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I just read this article in British dialect about Brexit and was bothered by the clause

The ultimate reason for this case was that the Referendum Act 2015 was silent on what the consequences would be for one outcome in a vote which could only have two outcomes. This echoes the lack of progress towards Brexit by a government whose civil servants were prevented for preparing for the possibility of a Leave vote.

I'm familiar with "prevent from doing" and "prevent doing" but not "prevent for doing." Is this a simple mistake? Here's a related question.
My friend who is an academic writer and British medical research doctor says the phrase seems grammatical to him. That's why I ask.

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sventechie
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about a trivial typo (*for* instead of *from*). – FumbleFingers Dec 10 '16 at 17:50
  • @FumbleFingers Well, the OP is asking whether it is a trivial typo or non-colloquial usage. Can you elaborate to confirm it is indeed the former? – faintsignal Dec 10 '16 at 17:52
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    The quality of sub-editing in British newspapers leaves a great deal to be desired. It is a mistake, whatever the cause -- typo or bad English. – Mick Dec 10 '16 at 17:53
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    @faintsignal: How is my closevote comment not clear? The fact of it being a typo is screamingly obvious to any native speaker, so I would have cast the same closevote for the same reason even if it had been asked on English Language Learners. Questions asking about a single instance of an obviously invalid usage aren't usually welcome on either site (the specific error might never occur again, so why bother examining it in detail?). It might be different if OP had done the research and found multiple instances of the same error, but that's impossible here. – FumbleFingers Dec 10 '16 at 18:05
  • Welcome to English Language and Usage. The link doesn't show the sentence. Is it the right link? –  Dec 10 '16 at 18:20
  • @FumbleFingers I don't dispute your reasons to close. I just felt a question Is this a case of A or B? is worthy of a response It's A because ... before the question is closed. So, to your knowledge, there is no grammatically sound precedent for the usage in the quote. Thanks for your clarification. – faintsignal Dec 10 '16 at 18:44
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    @Mick: If I'd have thought "bad English" was a credible factor here I probably wouldn't have closevoted (it might well be interesting to know which speakers tend to use the form, and why). But I'm pretty sure there are *no* native speakers who would be prone to such an error in actual speech, and if it were to be something that some particular subset of nns learners tend to get wrong, it should be posted on English Language Learners anyway. – FumbleFingers Dec 10 '16 at 18:50
  • FYI Your link to the article seems to only work for subscribers to the publication. – faintsignal Dec 10 '16 at 18:59
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    Re your friend, keep in mind that many readers comfortable with English would read right past the error without noticing it, as they expect "from" to follow "prevented" and would read "for" as "from" unless they were being especially careful. – Hot Licks Dec 10 '16 at 19:53

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After showing my highly educated friend the Google N-gram model search results he rescinded his endorsement of the sentence's grammaticality.

There are a few related phrases that also seem to be typos.

sventechie
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