Breaking Muphry's Law - Daily Writing Tips

by Mark Nichol

A recent newspaper blog post about a typographical error on Mitt Romney?s iPhone ?With Mitt? app ? it refers to ?A Better Amercia? ? inevitably succumbed to Muphry?s law, which states that any criticism of a writing or editing error will itself contain such an error.

After commenting on the mistake, the blogger referred to the microblogging site Tumblr, writing, ?And there?s already a Tumblr [page] for this with people goofing on the slip-up?.or what that be a Tumbeler?? That final phrase (which also reveals that the blogger obviously didn?t read my post about ellipses), should read, ?or would that be a Tumbeler?? (If you want to ruin a joke that features a deliberate typographical error, there?s nothing better than immediately preceding it with an accidental typo.)

The adage the blogger?s boo-boo upholds is also known, with variations, as McKean?s law, after lexicographer Erin McKean; Skitt?s law, named for an alt.usage.english contributor; and Hartman?s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation, the grandiloquent nomenclature of technical writer and fiction writer and editor Jed Hartman.

A blogger with the handle Zeno called it the Iron Law of Nitpicking, a better label, perhaps, as it does not credit a particular person, but Muphry?s law (which only indirectly refers to a specific source) is of course the most appropriate moniker.

An Australian editor named John Bangsund explicated the law as follows in 1992:

(a) If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written;
(b) If an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
(c) The stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault;
(d) Any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

The oldest known statement along these lines, however, is one from early twentieth-century writer Ambrose Bierce (best known for his caustically misanthropic Devil?s Dictionary), who in 1909 wrote in a writing handbook, ?Writers all, both great and small, are habitual sinners against the light; and their accuser is cheerfully aware that his own work will supply (as in making this book it has supplied) many ?awful examples.??

The moral of the story ? one I disregard by writing this post, which according to Muphry?s law should be rewarded by divine retribution in the form of commenters pointing out some error I?ve introduced ? is, ?Writers in glass houses shouldn?t throw stones.?

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