Response 2: The Phenomenology of Error

I think that William’s text does a good job at pointing out the differences between errors caught consciously and subconsciously. While a normal reader might notice a misplaced comma or misspelled word, he or she is most likely not going to notice a mistake in parallelism. When you read to edit, you notice many more mistakes than you would if you were reading for content. This is why multiple people look at pieces of writing before publication. However, Williams points out numerous examples of writers violating their own rules of writing. For example, he points out E. B. White’s misuse of “that” v. “which”, a very common writing mistake. What makes it OK for writers to violate their own rules and then judge others for similar mistakes? The same goes for those grading papers. Chances are, the professor has made similar mistakes in his or her own writing and never caught the mistakes. Writing pieces should be checked for content and if general mistakes are caught then they should be corrected. Often times the general public will understand a written work better if it is written in a way similar to their speaking habits. This isn’t to say that you should completely disregard every grammar rule, but if it is more common to incorrectly use “which” and “that” in a sentence and will help the reader understand, will anyone reading strictly for content even notice? According to Williams, the answer is no. He proves this point by inserting approximately 100 errors into the 14 page article we read. Personally, I know I only caught a few mistakes and I doubt any reader, including professionals in the English field, caught all 100.