Muphry's Law is a saying that says: "If you write something that criticizes editing or correcting, there will be a mistake in what you have written." His name is a deliberate spelling of "Murphy's Law".
Names for variations on principles have also been created, usually in the context of online communication, including:
- Umhoefer or UmhÃÆ'¶fer rules: "The article about writing itself is poorly written." Named after editor of Joseph A. Umhoefer.
- Skitt's Law: "Any post that corrects errors on other posts will contain at least one error itself." Named after Skitt, contributor alt.usage.english on Usenet.
- Prescriptive retardation law from Hartman: "Any correct grammar, punctuation or spelling article or statement must contain at least one error [ sic ]." Named after journalist Jed Hartman.
- The iron law of nitpicking: "You are never more likely to make grammatical errors than when correcting someone else's grammar." Invented by blogger Zeno.
- McKean's Law: "Any correction of speech or writing of another person will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographic error."
- Bell's first law of Usenet: "Spelling and/or grammatical flames will have spelling and/or grammatical errors." Named after Andrew Bell, an alt.sex contributor on Usenet.
Further variation states that defects in prints ("Clark's legal document") or published works ("Barker evidence") will only be found after printing and not during proofreading, and deficiencies such as spelling errors in emails sent will be found by the sender only when rereading from the "Sent" box.
Video Muphry's law
History
John Bangsund of the Society of Editors (Victoria) in Australia identified Muphry's law as "the more well-known editorial application of Murphy's law", and placed it in March 1992 at the Society of Editor Newsletter in his column "John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet".
The law, as established by Bangsund, states that:
(a) if you write something that criticizes editing or correcting, there will be a mistake in what you have written;
(b) if an author thanked you in a book for editing or correcting you, there would be a mistake in the book;
(c) the stronger the sentiments expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the error;
(D) any book intended for editing or style will be inconsistent internally.
In November 2003 Canberra Editor added the following elaborations:
Muphry's law also states that, if mistakes are as innocent as the nose on your face, everyone can see it except you. Your readers will always see errors in the title, in the title, in the first paragraph of anything, and on the top line of the new page. This is where authors, editors, and correctors are likely to make mistakes.
The Bangsund formulation is not the first to express general sentiment that editorial criticism or suggestion usually contains its own writing errors. In 1989, Paul Dickson praised editor Joseph A. Umhoefer with the saying, "The article about writing itself is poorly written," and quotes a correspondent who observes that Umhoefer "may have been the first to speak it openly, yet many others must have think about it for a long time. "An earlier reference to the idea, though not expressed as a saying, appears in a book published in 1909 by Ambrose Bierce:
In both sense and accuracy no one practiced the final appeals court, for writers all, great or small, were sinners accustomed to fighting the light; and their accusers cheerfully realize that his own work will provide (as in making this book that he provides) many 'terrible examples' - his later works are less abundant, he hopes, than ever before. He still believes that this does not disqualify him because it shows by another example rather than his own way of not writing. Infallible teachers are still in the ancient forest, throwing seeds into black and white birds.
Maps Muphry's law
Example
Stephen J. Dubner explains the study of the existence of Muphry law in the "Freakonomics" section of The New York Times in July 2008. He accused the The Economist a typo in reference to the Cornish pastry which are sold in Mexico, assuming that "pastry" has been intended and only familiar with the word "pasties" with the meaning of nipple cover. A reader has reminded him of the existence of the law, and
In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote a letter of condolence to a mother whose son died in Afghanistan, where he spelled the family's name of the deceased. The Sun (newspaper tabloid) publishes articles that strongly criticize the lack of care. In this article, the paper misrepresents the same name and is forced to publish its own apology.
In 2017, when discussing the spelling mistakes of "coverage" as "covfefe" by US President, Donald J. Trump, the CNN news network misspelled the word "Chief" as "Cheif" in the role of Political Chief Analyst in the on-screen graph.
See also
- Fumblerules
- "Lifting your own chest"
References
External links
- Violating Muphry's Law, by Mark Nichol. Daily Writing Tips
- Now presenting... Law of Muphry, by Ben Zimmer. Language Log
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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