The Phenomenology of Error

Abstract

I am often puzzled by what we call errors of grammar and usage, errors such as different than, between you and I, a which for a that, and so on. I am puzzled by what motive could underlie the unusual ferocity which an irregardless or a hopefully or a singular media can elicit. In his second edition of On Writing Well (New York, 1980), for example, William Zinsser, an otherwise amiable man I'm sure, uses, and quotes not disapprovingly, words like detestable vulgarity (p. 43), garbage (p. 44), atrocity (p. 46), horrible (p. 48); oaf (p. 42), idiot (p. 43), and simple illiteracy (p. 46), to comment on usages like OK, hopefully, the affix -wise, and myself in He invited Mary and myself to dinner. The last thing I want to seem is sanctimonious. But as I am sure Zinsser would agree, what happens in Cambodia and Afghanistan could more reasonably be called horrible atrocities. The likes of Idi Amin qualify as legitimate oafs. Idiots we have more than enough of in our state institutions. And while simply illiteracy is the condition of billions, it does not characterize those who use disinterested in its original sense.1 I am puzzled why some errors should excite this seeming fury while others, not obviously different in kind, seem to excite only moderate disapproval. And I am puzzled why some of us can regard any particular item as a more or less serious while others, equally perceptive, and acknowledging that the same item may in some sense be an error, seem to invest in their observation no emotion at all.

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