Mark Liberman published an amusing post on Language Log a couple days ago on linguistic incorrections. These occur when one person corrects another person’s grammar or spelling but the correction turns out to be incorrect.
I’m trying to recall the last time I was guilty of an incorrection, but I’m sure I have been. Incorrection seems to me to be akin to hypercorrection, the alteration of an expression to make it sound “more correct,” but actually resulting in an ungrammatical structure. An example is the misuse of a phrase such as “my brother and I” when “my brother and me” is correct:
The bank sent my brother and I (should be “my brother and me”) a foreclosure notice on our office building. Maybe him and me (or is it “he and I”?) should have paid the rent on time. Continue reading ‘Incorrections and over-confidence’