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.
The Language Loggers were prompted to comment on incorrections by a rather astounding post in Yarn Harlot, in which the Canadian Stephanie Pearl-McPhee reports receiving bizarre email critiques of her spelling, because it isn’t “American.” Although her blog is not at all language-related, she felt forced to respond to the abuse she received for spelling things in a Canadian way.
When Stephanie writes “centre” or “colour,” she is spelling these words the way she was taught in school. Her spelling stalker, however, thinks she should “get a clue.” (Well, I’m leaving off the rather rude opening part of that malediction.)
This linguistic xenophobia is similar to that expressed rather comically by the Conservapedia, a right-wing “answer” to Wikipedia that insists that all contributions conform to U.S. American spelling. Much to my amusement, the Language Loggers had a time with that one. (In a related thread of comment on Conservapedia, John Chew pointed out that Conservapedia is actually a high-school project that got some attention in the blogosphere recently.)
It must be nice to be so confident that you can go ahead and correct people’s mistakes, even if you are so poorly read you can’t recognize your own. Pride goeth before a fall.
I have worked at newspapers for many years and it is amazing how many people write letters to us to correct something we’ve written about only to be wrong themselves! It happens a lot.
Rhea, I have to admit that I have been on the verge several times of doing just that.
Fortunately, I am meticulous and at the same time lazy when it comes to writing letters to the editor. By the time I get it together to send such a letter in, I’ve been through it enough times to realize whether I’m right or not.