Joan Didion-Why I Write

After reading Didion's article, I noticed that her main point was there are infinite reasons why writers decide to write. I enjoyed how she made her points by referring to her book "A Book of Common Prayer." She used imagery such as "grayed and obscurely sinister light" this jumped out at me because when I read books for enjoyment, I tend to like books where it is easy to create a mental picture from just the words on the page. She also mentioned how grammar for her is "a piano played by ear" she obviously is not the greatest at grammar however, not many people are. I thought that was a witty way of saying, grammar is not her forte. Didion then said "I am not a good writer or a bad writer but simply a writer, a person who’s most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper." I relate to this statement because I feel the same way. I am not a horrible writer however, I still struggle. I noticed that Didion is the type of writer who likes to have fun with what she is doing. Use personal experiences and creativity to write a book. She includes the five W's: who, what, where, when and why. She does this to move her story along and to obtain ideas. Joan wrote about all of these techniques she does to lead into her conclusion and main point. Overall, all writers are different and are compelled to write by a variety of different things.

Kevin,Chrissy,Todd and Greg

1) Williams main point about errors is that they are everywhere. In order to make his point, Williams talked about grammarians. The people who make these rules on grammar weren't able to describe the rules of grammar without making errors of their own.

2) The game that Williams speaks of is about the errors that are in the paper. Towards the end he says that there are about 100 grammatical errors in the paper. The game is whether or not the reader was able to find these errors while reading.

3) Williams showed grammarians violating their own rules to prove that everyone makes mistakes. He shows that even the best can't do it right.

4) Williams locates errors in both the reader and the writer. If the reader does not know of the errors, then there is no error committed. Likewise, the writer should be able to post a grammatically correct paper without making the reader search for hidden errors.

Group Writing: Tecia, Brooke, Julie, Kenny & Ben!

1. We believe that Williams main point was that errors are a part of everyday society and they are okay. It is okay to make a few errors here and there, they will eventually be corrected.

2. We believe te game is the fact that he purposely inserts errors in his writing to show that unless you are clearly looking for errors they willl most likely go unnoticed. He was testing people when he wrote this article by putting 100 errors in it.

3. He does this to prove that everyone makes errors, even the people that we think know it all.

4. We believe he locates the errors of both the reader and the writer because the writer makes the errors but the reader does not catch them while reading unless they are looking for them.

Williams Questions

Melanie Gilliland, Beth Gonos, Amanda Lane, Kaitie Price

1. Williams is saying that errors in grammar are only important when people notice them. They happen all the time and because of that it's only that person's fault to an extent. Content is always going to be the most important thing. He makes his point by sprinkling errors all over the paper to see how much the readers will notice without being told.

2. The game he explains is that he intentionally put errors in the paper to make people see that, when reading for content, errors go unnoticed.

3. Anyone can make mistakes, but when a published writer does it people don't notice because they're not looking for them. When students make mistakes it is obviously noticed because the teacher is looking for them, red pen in hand.

4. That depends on who the writer is, a student will get blamed for an error, while we think a famous writer probably made the mistake on purpose to make a point. He tracks the errors from the page to the book to the teacher and so on....

Group Assignment (Drew, Kyle, Laura, Kelsey, Gabby, Ellie)

1.) Errors are important but they are not that important. He makes his point by making fun of the grammarians who often made the same kinds of mistakes that they criticized which displays them to be hypocrites.

2.) The "game" is to go back and circle all of the errors and send it into the editor.

3.) Shows that even people who study grammar as a living makes mistakes.

4.) He located errors in the reader because they are one's who locate the errors in other people's work.

Williams Questions

Erin Harding, Katie Allison, Aarin Frazee, Kaitlyn Knapik and Robin Kline

1) Errors are everywhere, most people over look them, errors are different to different people
2)To see if while reading his article anyone found errors but, were not necessarily looking for them.
3)Basically, to drive his point home that errors are everywhere and inevitable.
4)Both, because the error has to start somewhere. For example the person who wrote the paper could pass it to someone else etc.

The Phenomenology of Error (Aarin F)

After reading this excerpt from The Phenomenology of Error, I do not even know where to begin. There were some very valid points made, but personally I see a lot of this as pure babbling on Williams' part.

The one part of the excerpt that I found very interesting was when Williams' talked about the steps on how an error occurs. He talks about how an error has to start somewhere, to end up on a paper of a student. I agree with how he says this, but also I believe that things change over time. I think that if an error is made enough times, then it starts to become a habit. It is just like when you played the game “telephone” as a kid. Someone starts by saying a phrase or sentence and you try and get the sentence to the end of the line without any errors. There are many times that you will get to the last person and the sentence comes out totally different than when it started. I guess that I am trying to say that errors happen unintentionally all the time. Something might be interpreted wrong or someone hears it wrong, and that is where the error originates. Errors cannot always be caught and therefore that is how errors happen.

Williams' did open my eyes to all of the different errors that someone can make, but he did it in a way that I do not like. Reading this was kind of intimidating and made you feel like you didn't know any of the words in the English language. Even though he explained it in a very complex way, he did get his point across.

Williams Error (Week 4 Blog)

What's up bloggers? I bet all of you had just as much trouble reading this as I did! I had a lot of trouble comprehending what Williams was saying throughout the entire reading but I think I got some of it down. I understand his points on errors but just the way he says it confuses me a lot! Errors are made in everyday conversations but no one really seems to care but when you write a paper for class the teacher always cares because you get corrected but if those corrections don't help you in everyday conversations then why can't we write how we want even if we make errors. I think as long as the information is taken in and comprehended don't you think it should be correct even if down on paper it's not grammatically correct? I do! I feel like the "game" he is talking about is like if we keep making errors and re-learn not to make errors but continue to make them we are just messing with others and playing a little game with them. I think he showed the grammarians making errors to make fun of them because all they do is learn and talk about grammar but yet they make mistakes, so yeah I think he making a mockery of there lives. It was just very tough to talk about this reading because it confused me a lot and was and probably will be my least favorite reading but I am looking forward to next weeks reading because it probably won't put me to sleep.

error reading

I can definitely understand why before reading this we were told it would be one of our hardest readings. At first I just thought that it was really difficult to get into his mind state because he talks a lot different then myself and the people in my everyday life. Once I actually took the time to think about what he was saying it made a lot more sense. At the beginning i think that he was repeating himself too much with the comparison of correcting our mistakes when we hurt someone else physically or emotionally to correcting ourselves and others when improper grammar is used. He didn't need to drag it out that long i understood the message after the first few paragraphs. I would definitely have to agree that the point a person is making (the message) and the way they're making it (the method) is way more important than the grammar their using. I hate when in school someone has wrote a great paper but it gets deducted two letter grades because they didn't have the right amount of commas or something stupid. I think grammar is kind of important when writing a paper but not the point of the paper. You could have great grammar and still write a horrible paper. Everyone has different ways of talking depending on where they were from, how they were brought up, the people they hang out with, and many other factors. It's kind of hard to say there should be one correct way of speaking and putting words together. There are certain expressions that one group of people may use that other people may see as bad grammar but really it's just how they talk. Williams did a good job at talking about this issue. Overall I think that Williams brought up many good points and I really like his message but not his method. I think he spent to much tome focusing on trying to sound intelligent and over did it, making his message not exciting to read about.

ERROR : GABBY

This article was quite difficult to read as i progressed. The main points i took out of the reading was that grammatical errors and physical mistakes are definetly not grouped the same, although some grammarians act like its just as offensive. The beggining of the essay was quite humorous in the sense that some people are so critical of harmless seeiming errors when it comes to writing. The author also pointed out that some of the grammarians often make some of the same mistakes and could be called hipocrites. I found it pretty funny that most of the world in a sence of perfect grammar is illiterate according to some. I know i have no special talent for grammar. The author was trying to point out that the error is really in the reader perhaps because they are the ones who are looking for the errors within someone elses work, well unless its truly a terrible paper with no organization in my opinion. The game that he talks about in the end of the passage, i think the author is refering to classification and labeling that is done to alot of writing and language to sway people into writing and spaking certain ways perhaps.

Errors (BG)

After reading for this weeks blog and reading Williams take on errors, i found myself thinking about how my friends correct me sometimes and how frustrating it might be. the first thing that pops into my head was the little errors people make because they don't know the correct form to use, such as to,too and two and how i don't have the best speech. I am in the habit, like a lot of other people, in saying things like "me and my friends.." when its actually suppose to me " my friends and I...". We just say what sounds right to us, and don't think about the grammar aspect of it. everyone makes errors, i mean its part of being human, and no ones perfect. even professionals make errors. towards the end of the reading, i came to a thought that i didn't really find any errors at all in this piece. i am not a professional writing and i don't notice a lot of things that others might consider to be an error. now if you told me the assignment was to pick out the errors in this piece then i probably would have read the piece ten times over again looking for errors. then you have some errors that are intentional and those that are not. when writing most of us write like we talk, so there could be a few errors that slip on by without anyone noticing, then the ones that are on purpose stick out like a sore thumb. they want to be noticed, they want you to know they are there. overall in my opinion, this reading was ok and interesting, but probably not one of my favorites so far.

My interpretation of 'The Phenomenology of Error'

I thought Williams had an interesting perspective about grammar. He was neither a grammarian nor completely against correct grammar. I feel his overall view can be summed up in this quote "The objective consequence of the error simply do not equal those of an atrocity, or even of clumsiness" (Williams, 153). In less wordy words it simply means that grammar mistakes like "their" instead of "they're" aren't the end of the world. Williams becomes so redundant after he makes this point that his essay becomes a rant against excessive grammar correction. So instead of doing the same and ranting about what I liked and didn't like I'm going to make four points on what I thought was interesting.
1) The comparison between grammatical and social blunders was pretty funny. It also made a good point. In relation to what really matters in this life I would much rather forget a comma every once in a while then do something really embarrassing like face plant in the mud while walking to class.
2) The content and context of whatever is being said is always more important then the (lack of) grammar. I can assume we've all seen Facebook statuses that are something to the effect of "I hte my life every1 blames every thing on mi (DRAMA)!!!"
Though posts like these are over dramatic and become very annoying I have to remind myself that someone is trying to communicate some type of distress and I should pay attention to them (if I care about them).
3) Though I agree with Williams that grammatical errors are hardly ever a crisis (unless you're commanding a robot to do you're bidding by text message and you accidentally text your robot "Feed the dog Greg" instead of texting your brother). There are mistakes that do bother me. In all honesty they shouldn't. I understand they're not a big deal and I've never pointed them out to anyone unless asked to proof read their writing. The one that bothers me the most though, is when people use fifty "dots" is their ellipses....................................... Ellipses have three "dots" or four if their thought trails off at the end of sentence.
4) I like the point Williams made about who decides what is "correct grammar". English is a living language so it really is always changing. Williams uses an example of an editor who rejected the use of impact as a verb though it has been used as such since 1601. Besides the fact that our language is always changing we also need to factor in dialect. Believe it not, the way people speak in Kent is different then the way people speak where I am from in Athens, Ohio even though it's in the same state and only three hours away. The localized dialect of Kent is that of the "Great Lakes" accent sounding similarly to that of people in Michigan or upper parts of Illinois. The general population of Athens has an Appalachian accent. Neither is better or worse, it's just different.
Language is fascinating and complex but it loses so much beauty when it's picked apart just for the sake of grammar. If everyone used perfect grammar all the time we wouldn't have books like Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs or Ulysses by James Joyce (talk about run on sentences). By breaking a few rules every now and then in writing it allows for more creative thought for more free thinking.

Greg Knapp- Phenomenology of Error

Joseph Williams: "The Phenomenology of Error", points out some very interesting points in grammar and error. Williams explains what he believes about errors and how people go about interpreting them. Errors to me are only a minor problem when looking at a paper. I believe that comprehension, clarity, and understanding are much more important than errors. If a teacher looks for errors more than what the writer is saying, then the meaning behind the paper is lost. Also, if a student learns of a teacher that grades more on grammar, that student may start to focus more on worrying about where to put a comma rather than if his or her paper even makes sense. I think that some teachers are blinded by grammar when there is a well-written paper and they don't even realize it.

Williams also talks about how one person would call something an error while another would not. This can be very confusing for anyone. I have had a similar case where a teacher would say that my rough draft was fine and another would find multiple errors throughout my paper. When Williams speaks of the game, he is talking about the errors that are in the paper. He states that there are about 100 errors in the paper; errors that the reader probably didn't even notice. Williams just reinforces his statements about errors. There is no way that errors will just magically go away and never be seen again. There will always be errors and people who can't stand them.

The Phenomenology of Error

Wow, so just looking at the title totally turned me off to reading this... as bad as that sounds. I had to read through a few of the pages multiple times until I could sort of grasp what I thought he was saying. Grammatical errors are not something you just apologize for and things get better... it isn't the type of thing where you mess it up, say I'm sorry and walk away. I took it as it is not as bad as that, you do not need to apologize for grammatical errors, and making them does not make you stupid. Some writers may place the error in on purpose, even though if someone saw it they may call them an idiot for the error... when really it could have been placed there on purpose.

I was a little confused when he began to speak of how we have to be skeptical of answers we get when we ask for help about a possible error we think we may have made. The way I take it, is that when we ask others to check our own paper odds are you will end up with even more errors then you started with. If this is true why do we do peer editing, and why in High School did I waste all those days in class having a minimum of three people checking over my paper and giving their own opinion on my work?

Overall this is not one of my favorite readings so far.

Williams error

I will start off by saying that in this reading I had read the first paragraph and I was completely lost. I believe what williams is trying to say is that some mistakes are intentional. Some mistakes are supposed to be put into a certain reading to make a point. Some people may read a magazine or a book, or something and they see one little word mispelled and they think that the writer is stupid or something. But all the writer was trying to do was make a point in a story and the reader mistook it.
I think the "game " that williams is talking about is when we write we just write how we feel and what we want to say and if we want it to be spelled a different way then we do it. Williams was just trying to explain that writing is a game between the writer and the reader. The reader reads through a book and tries to pick out all the grammatical mistakes that the writer has made and tries to see who is the winner at the end.
I think Williams would show them violating their own rules to show that the rules of writing can be easily broken and even the biggest and best writers in the world could make grammatical mistakes because it happens to everyone. I don't think that anyone can write or type up a paper with no grammatical errors.
This story was really confusing and hard to understand , and I think it was like that because of the grammatical errors that were throughout this story, or were they grammatical errors, were they intentional?

Am I a Writer? Erin

As of right now I do not really consider myself a writer however, I would like to be. I am interested in learning how to get better because one day I would love to write for a magazine (hence my major, magazine journalism). I don't necessarily hate to write but, I prefer to write what I'm passionate about. When given boring prompts I tend to do worse than something I like learning and talking about. If you tell me to write about fashion, I could in heartbeat. Fashion is something I want to learn more about and get involved in. I am also good at this type of prompt or question because it's open ended and I can freely express how I feel. I do think that the word writer is considered a title. A title for someone who does it as a career or a pastime,it is something they are known for. I feel like with that title a writer is good with what they do and have years of schooling under their belt. Yes, everyone can write. But its how good you are that classifies you as a "writer" or just anyone putting pen to paper.

The Phenomenology of Error -Julie K

When I first started reading this I was a little lost. As I started to get through the reading I realized he was talking very passionately about errors in writing and how they are not handled the same as social errors. My mind was blown reading through this because of how much he expressed his opinions on what seems to be such a simple matter.

When I think about writing a paper, I do pay attention to the grammar and verb tenses I'm using but in no way do I feel like I should apologize for the errors I make. I feel like checking these kinds of grammar errors is somewhat of a lost art. If enough people forget about certain rules, they seem to just disappear. For example, he mentions that "Zinsser rejects impact as a verb, despite the fact that impact has been used as a verb at least since 1601." Things change over time and I think with technology booming like it is, grammar is less important.

On a different note, I like that fact that he brings up the idea that if people whose job is solely to find errors and points them out, makes and error and does not see it that does error really matter. That's at least what I got from it. I liked this line, "What I'm interested in here is the noticing or the not noticing by the same person who stipulates what should be noticed." It seems like such a complicated sentence but I feel like this sentence really shows his purpose for writing.

If we, as writers, aren't supposed to make errors and the people who correct and point out our errors don't even notice their own, then who is to say that those errors are even worth pointing out.

Overall, I think this reading was very deep, and eye opening. I think it's pretty crazy when someone can talk so deeply and so long about one topic. I don't really enjoy, however, reading such deep material.

WilliamsErrors

I am currently writing this blog as I read because I feel like it will be easier to express my feelings toward this reading. I am on the bottom of page 154. Williams is saying that when reading or grading someone's paper with a critical eye for grammar, there will be more error found than if it were read based on content. For example, if I am watching a movie and told that there are errors in the script, chances are, I won't even enjoy the movie because I will be critiquing everything I watch and finding problems with scenes that I would have normally enjoyed.
Now, I am at the bottom of 158 where Williams is ending his rant on the standards of grammar. He had done his research and proved that the student is not the only person making the so called "errors." Authors such as E. B. White, Orwell, and many others have made errors that have been overlooked simply because they are the wise writers of their times. Critics don't look at their writing as closely. What Williams is trying to say is that when reading their work, people don't see the writing as something that can be corrected simply because they are the standards from which we work from. Not only is he saying that they messed up, but he also blames them for the students error because that is where their knowledge on the subject originated.
By the end of this article I was very intrigued. I, in fact, had not noticed any grammatical errors at all. This verifies that William had made some valid points. I had not been looking for errors and was not reading with a critical eye, therefore they had simply gone unnoticed. If i were to go through the article again, I bet would find wrong uses of grammar, simply because I was told that there were wrong uses of grammar.

Errors

It interested me when Williams' mentioned his employers saying things like "if the teacher said so" What i think happened was, his employer was saying how something was only right or wrong depending on the teacher who sees it. This makes it seem like sometimes errors will only matter depending on who is viewing it. I feel like this is true because in high school you could have a teacher one year who would rip apart papers for tiny grammar and spelling mistakes and other teachers who overlook them completely. Williams then goes on to say that there is a great variation of definition of error. I think he means that some errors are seen as more of a big deal compared to others. So certain people will see sentence structure as the most important thing, and others view punctuation as important. Williams' formulas and rules for noticing errors and which are the most disrupting to the written text were very confusing and i literally have no idea where he was going with that. But i think his point about the game is that writers and grammarians honestly can not agree on errors, and fixing them. The game would be some sort of a competition to find errors in each other's work that maybe the writer didn't recognize or think of as a serious mistake. Not really sure though...

Williams Error

This reading was indeed more difficult than the previous EBay story "All my life for Sale" by John Freyer. However, by focusing on the main points it helped me to understand what Joseph M. Williams was trying to explain. In Williams article I realized that errors are hard to decipher. There are exceptions for everyone and even famous writers make them. One of his main points was faulty parallelism. His example was taken from a popular handbook. This showed a great variation of errors and exceptions. Williams stated that "its the experience of the writer who created the error, and the experience of the teacher who catches it." Personally, I agree with that statement. Everyone learns different methods at their own schools. What my high school English teacher said is the correct way of doing something could possibly be wrong in the eyes of my college professors. He showed examples from E.B White, Fowler and Barzun. This showed that even professionals get mixed up. I think that the reason Williams showed errors violating his own rules was basically, to drive his point home. He was describing how the concept of errors is so broad, that most cannot decipher right from wrong. I found that this article by Williams was interesting because I completely agree with it. Errors are everywhere even in what we just read. It depends if an error catches you eye while reading or, if you personally feel they are wrong. There are so many grammar and usage errors I think that, people will never be able to narrow it down to correct and incorrect.

Errors

Williams' point about errors is that they seem like a yes-no kind of thing. Yes that was an error, or no that was not an error. However, Williams says that it's more of a scale. Our emotions connected with the category in which the error falls will define the error itself. They will define the reaction, and essentially the prevolence of those errors in the future.
Williams is a bit upset though, that errors in grammar are not offensive, because they will not get fixed. If no one cares about the mistakes made in grammar, there is no emotional investment in trying to correct them.
Williams slips in, throughout the essay the very errors he is speaking about. He is interested in how many errors people find the first read through, and what else they would find upon re-readig it.
What I found interesting was the way Williams tracks down the origin of the error. It's a long chain of people screwing up grammar, it's never just one person making the mistake.

ERROR

This story was very difficult to understand for most likely because my reading skills are not that great. He used very large words in which I did not understand. One part that I did understand was where he quotes on page 153 "Moreover, unlike social errors, linguistic errors do not ordinarily require that we apologize for them." I believe when you make a grammatical error or a linguistic error you should almost apologize to yourself because you are the one making the mistake and that mistake might portray you differently to certain people because of the fact that people judge you. One point that really confused me was when he was explaining where an error originates from and where the error is always located, the student's paper and the grammarian's handbook. At least I think that was what he was trying to say. I did not understand that point at what so ever. One thing that I did understand and agree with also is when he was talking about the fact that many people do not know the difference between certain uses of words such as" me and Kelsey and Kelsey and I" or the difference between "to" and "too". This drives me absolutely insane sometimes because I believe that everyone should know how to use these correctly and in correct context. Sometimes you even have no idea of what the person is saying because of the fact that they are using their words in the wrong context. Other then that, it was very difficult to understand everything else he had to say. I really hope that our other readings are not as hard as this one.

Error

It was very hard for me to follow what I was reading and for my attention to be kept. The reading was very long and not to interesting. If you do not know an error when you make it and re read you are most likely not to fix it and then get it wrong. I can relate to the errors in my papers I make a lot of them. I re read what i write but I can not identify my spelling errors and use of commas and so on. To each person an error is something different. Errors are going to happen no matter who you are, it just depends if you are smart enough to catch them or if someone who is checking your paper is. He also talked about other mistakes like spilling coffee or steping on someones toes. those are indeed mistakes, but i never compared them to writing mistakes. Ending up with more errors then started with was another good point to. when you ask X amount of questions you get X amount of answers. I thought it was interesting how people who were spouse to be experienced and writing about how not to make mistakes mad them in there writing ( as i just did here it should be their writing because they are a person but i thought i would point that out instead of changing it.)

It would drive me crazy dealing with all these errors. I dreaded reading this, some points were good but it was just too much about errors. I know you said before this is for teachers but if i was a teacher i would not enjoying reading about mistakes. When i read i just read it, I never really notice peoples mistakes that is why I hate peer editing peoples papers because I am not that much of help to them. I did not like this reading I wish it was more like the guy who sold all his stuff on eBay that kept my attention.

Error

As you said this reading would be one of the most difficult ones, I definitely agree. While I was reading I did find some of this hard to understand and I noticed that there was a usage of a lot of words I have never heard of. After reading it I think I may have gotten a point that Williams was trying to get across to people. The one thing I noticed was that he was saying how depending on the error, others are more important over others. There can be many different types of errors and each error has its own significance. For instance spelling errors may not be as important as in using words wrong in a sentence. Another point that I noticed Williams was making was that people tend to use words wrong in sentences. As in the reading it showed how people will use your instead of you're. Each word has a different meaning but people think they have the same meaning. This really stood out to me because I always recognize how people make mistake like that with contractions. While reading I also noticed how numerous people can read the same thing over and over and never notice a mistake and then someone else comes along and notices the mistake right away. I think that this happens because people don't take the necessary time while they are reading and just try to read fast or in other cases it can just get over looked because it's a simple mistake. Although this reading was not very interesting to me it made me realize that an error in writing is just not about grammar or punctuation mistakes it has a whole different meaning.

Errors

I agree with you when you said this reading is a little more difficult to read than the previous ones. By just reading the first sentence I could tell that it wasn’t going to make that much sense to me, so I got out the questions and tried to answer them as best I could. When reading pp. 155-158 I noticed that he was trying to get the point across that some errors are more important than others. I also learned in these pages that even the people who write grammar books make mistakes. In these pages it shows examples of people breaking the grammar rules as they state the exact rule. I think he makes his point by doing this because obviously the rule isn’t important if you’re breaking it while you state it. Also, it shows that if you don’t know an error you’re obviously not going to spot it. I also think that Williams showed the evidence of grammarians violating their own rules because it shows that errors are going to happen regardless of who you are. The “game” that he talks about isn’t really a game it is more of a test. Williams planted errors throughout the paper to see if anyone noticed them. If you had found any then you should send them in to see what error was recognized the most. I think that William locates errors in the reader because if the reader never knew about a specific error than they would have never noticed it, which would have made it correct. What it comes down to in the end is that it all depends on who is reading your paper and what errors they are looking for. That is the way I interpreted this reading.

errors- week 4

As soon as I started reading the reading for this week and Williams began speaking about how people do not know the differences. I automatically began thinking about how frustrating it is that some of my friends say your when they mean you're and say to instead of too or two, whether its formally or informally. It's also annoying when people say "me and my friend..." instead of my friend and I and when someone is telling a story saying "and I was like and she was like.." very annoying. I admit I used to be in that habit of overusing the word like, but now I am trying to get past that. After I read about the first page I realized many things, this is long, boring and confusing. Pretty much like you said it would be. I also found some of the reading to be very amusing about how poorly our society behaves today. I believe that William's main point about errors are they are caused by the writer and the grammarian's handbook. His point is also that errors come in many different forms and that to each person an error is something different. I think this comes from all teachers or professors teach differently causing the students to use what they were previously taught to learn that their previous teacher taught them improperly. He makes his point by telling stories of how he came about errors in his work and how the same things kept happening over and over again. I feel that much of his writing went over my head instead of into my head because I had no idea what he was saying most of the time. Many of the words he used I had never heard of and had no idea what they meant which made for a very difficult reading. I definitely see how this was the hardest reading by far and I hope it gets easier again!

Error (Kevin)

As you said, this was hard read. But after reading it, looking at blog posts and going over your questions in the E-mail you sent out I think I got the gist of it. Joseph Williams is saying that an error depends on different things. Some errors are more important that others, I see this being true using the words "your and you're." I always see while I'm texting, talking on Facebook or even Skype that most people use the word, your, just because its faster to type. This is more likely to be ignored other than when someone says "so and so and me" instead of "so and so and I. When I see this I correct it right away, I may not say it to the person but I will see it right away. But that may just be what I think, which is another one of Williams' points, that errors are more or less serious depending on who sees them, and what people determine are errors. The "game" Williams talks about at the end of the paper, at least what I think it is, is that if you found any errors in this paper, without going back through, you should send them in to Professor Hairston so she can tally the errors and see what is more seen as an error and what is not.