Comments on: An error is an error — except mine

By: More Grammatical Than Thou « Ask Copy Curmudgeon

More Grammatical Than Thou « Ask Copy Curmudgeon — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:20:24 +0000

[...] Doyle, the linguist behind the Motivated Grammar blog, put up a good post a couple weeks ago about the fine-for-me-but-not-for-thee attitude among some grammar [...]

By: Jonathon Owen

Jonathon Owen — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:44:31 +0000

This post makes me think of a related problem in editing, which is that a principled exception to a rule will probably just look like inconsistency to the reader. For example, we work with several authors who have only a middle initial, not a middle name. They insist on a letter without a following period. Even our proofreaders often insert what they think is a missing period.

If our proofreaders don’t even know that it’s a principled exception to the rule, what are our readers going to think? To a reader without access to our decision-making process, the principled exception is indistinguishable from an error.

By: linguischtick

linguischtick — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 01:05:46 +0000

This is a good observation. I think it’s along the same lines as the special pleading that purists engage in when talking about language change. “Sure the rules might change over time, but mine are the only ones that are really correct you should use them.”

By: Lane

Lane — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:23:30 +0000

Mark Liberman noted David Foster Wallace doing this a long time ago: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001630.html.

By: Mike Pope

Mike Pope — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:21:54 +0000

Are these examples of “fundamental attribution errors”? I can’t quite tell.

By: Joel D Canfield

Joel D Canfield — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:32:34 +0000

We judge ourselves by our intent and others by their actions.

When we can learn to look for good intent in the actions of others, we’ll not only save the world, but we’ll probably whine a lot less about weensy teensy leetle grammerrors which is a new word I just made up, so there.

Just subscribed recently, and I appreciate your non-Nazi take on this stuff.

By: gelolopez

gelolopez — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:14:53 +0000

Funny when these self-confessed grammar nazis make the weensiest elementary mistakes. Makes me want to say “Uh-huh, here’s some of your medicine b*tches!”

Great post as usual Gabe