Muphry's law is an adage that states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." [1] The name is a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law".
Names for variations on the principle have also been coined, usually in the context of online communication, including:
Further variations state that flaws in a printed ("Clark's document law") or published work ("Barker's proof") will only be discovered after it is printed and not during proofreading, [2] : 22, 61 [8] and flaws such as spelling errors in a sent email will be discovered by the sender only during rereading from the "Sent" box.
John Bangsund of the Society of Editors (Victoria) in Australia identified Muphry's law as "the editorial application of the better-known Murphy's law", [9] [10] and set it down in March 1992 in the Society of Editors Newsletter in his column "John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet". [1]
The law, as set out by Bangsund, states that:
(a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written;
(b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
(c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault;
(d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent. [1]
In November 2003 the Canberra Editor added the following elaboration:
Muphry's Law also dictates that, if a mistake is as plain as the nose on your face, everyone can see it but you. Your readers will always notice errors in a title, in headings, in the first paragraph of anything, and in the top lines of a new page. These are the very places where authors, editors and proofreaders are most likely to make mistakes. [9]
Bangsund's formulation was not the first to express the general sentiment that editorial criticism or advice usually contains writing errors of its own. In 1989, Paul Dickson credited editor Joseph A. Umhoefer with the adage, "Articles on writing are themselves badly written", and quoted a correspondent who observed that Umhoefer "was probably the first to phrase it so publicly; however, many others must have thought of it long ago." [2] : 357 An even earlier reference to the idea, though not phrased as an adage, appears in a 1909 book on writing by Ambrose Bierce:
In neither taste nor precision is any man's practice a court of last appeal, for writers all, both great and small, are habitual sinners against the light; and their accuser is cheerfully aware that his own work will supply (as in making this book it has supplied) many 'awful examples'—his later work less abundantly, he hopes, than his earlier. He nevertheless believes that this does not disqualify him for showing by other instances than his own how not to write. The infallible teacher is still in the forest primeval, throwing seeds to the white blackbirds.
— Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults (1909) [11]
Stephen J. Dubner described learning of the existence of Muphry's law in the "Freakonomics" section of The New York Times in July 2008. He had accused The Economist of a typo in referring to Cornish pasties being on sale in Mexico, assuming that "pastries" had been intended and being familiar only with the word "pasties" with the meaning of nipple coverings. A reader had alerted him to the existence of the law, and The Economist had responded by sending Dubner a Cornish pasty. [12]
In 2009, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hand-wrote a letter of condolence to a mother whose son had died in Afghanistan, in which he misspelled the man's surname. The Sun (a tabloid newspaper) published a vitriolic article criticising his lack of care. In this article, the paper misspelled the same name and was forced to publish an apology of its own. [13] [14]
Spelling is a set of conventions for written language regarding how graphemes should correspond to the sounds of spoken language. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element.
Proofreading is an iterative process of comparing galley proofs against the original manuscripts or graphic artworks to identify transcription errors in the typesetting process. In the past, proofreaders would place corrections or proofreading marks along the margins. In modern publishing, material is generally provided in electronic form, traditional typesetting is no longer used and thus this kind of transcription no longer occurs.
Copy editing is the process of revising written material ("copy") to improve quality and readability, as well as ensuring that a text is free of errors in grammar, style and accuracy. The Chicago Manual of Style states that manuscript editing encompasses "simple mechanical corrections through sentence-level interventions to substantial remedial work on literary style and clarity, disorganized passages, baggy prose, muddled tables and figures, and the like ". In the context of print publication, copy editing is done before typesetting and again before proofreading. Outside traditional book and journal publishing, the term "copy editing" is used more broadly, and is sometimes referred to as proofreading; the term sometimes encompasses additional tasks.
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A typographical error, also called a misprint, is a mistake made in the typing of printed or electronic material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual typesetting. Technically, the term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors, or changing and misuse of words such as "than" and "then". Before the arrival of printing, the copyist's mistake or scribal error was the equivalent for manuscripts. Most typos involve simple duplication, omission, transposition, or substitution of a small number of characters.
A grammar checker, in computing terms, is a program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a word processor, but are also available as a stand-alone application that can be activated from within programs that work with editable text.
In the context of written composition, drafting refers to any process of generating preliminary versions of a written work. Drafting happens at any stage of the writing process as writers generate trial versions of the text they're developing. At the phrasal level, these versions may last less than a second, as writers compose and then delete trial sentences; as fully developed attempts that have reached the end of a stage of usefulness, draft documents may last for perpetuity as saved "versions" or as paper files in archives.
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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. Published on April 12, 2005, by William Morrow, the book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. By late 2009, the book had sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Based on the success of the original book, Levitt and Dubner have grown the Freakonomics brand into a multi-media franchise, with a sequel book, a feature film, a regular radio segment on National Public Radio, and a weekly blog.
The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quotation indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated as found in the source text, including erroneous, archaic, or unusual spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Sic also applies to any surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might be interpreted as an error of transcription.
Spelling suggestion is a feature of many computer software applications used to suggest plausible replacements for words that are likely to have been misspelled.
A transcription error is a specific type of data entry error that is commonly made by human operators or by optical character recognition (OCR) programs. Human transcription errors are commonly the result of typographical mistakes; putting one's fingers in the wrong place while touch typing is the easiest way to make this error. Electronic transcription errors occur when the scan of some printed matter is compromised or in an unusual font – for example, if the paper is crumpled, or the ink is smudged, the OCR may make transcription errors when reading.
Erin McKean is an American lexicographer.
A foreign language writing aid is a computer program or any other instrument that assists a non-native language user in writing decently in their target language. Assistive operations can be classified into two categories: on-the-fly prompts and post-writing checks. Assisted aspects of writing include: lexical, syntactic, lexical semantic and idiomatic expression transfer, etc. Different types of foreign language writing aids include automated proofreading applications, text corpora, dictionaries, translation aids and orthography aids.
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Grammar nazi/spelling nazi or grammar pedant/spelling pedant is a term for a pedant who compulsively criticizes or corrects others' grammar mistakes, typos, misspellings, and other errors in speech or writing. The term originated in 1990s discussion forums as a way to insult those who overly correct others' grammar. "Grammar Nazis" often correct mistakes humorously, though this can reinforce arbitrary standards of linguistic correctness. These corrections often reflect literacy privilege. The term is often criticized for being a lighthearted use of the word Nazi. Grammar nazis are often criticized themselves for being rude or harsh.
Commonly misspelled English words are words that are often unintentionally misspelled in general writing.
Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette, is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms, online chatting sites, web forums, and other online engagement websites. The rules of etiquette that apply when communicating over the Internet are different from these applied when communicating in person or by audio or video call. It is a social code that is used in all places where one can interact with other human beings via the Internet, including text messaging, email, online games, Internet forums, chat rooms, and many more. Although social etiquette in real life is ingrained into our social life, netiquette is a fairly recent concept.
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Erin McKean described what she calls McKean's Law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."