Muphry's Law is an adage that states that "if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written".
John Bangsund of the Victorian Society of Editors (Australia) identified Muphry's Law as "the editorial application of the better-known Murphy's Law"[1][2] and set it down in 1992 in the Society of Editors Newsletter.[3]
The law, as set out by Bangsund, states that:
(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.[3]
A similar law: "McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error" has been set out by lexicographer Erin McKean.[4][5][6]
Similar laws have also been coined, usually in the context of online communication, under the names of Skitt's Law,[7] Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation (or The Law of Prescriptive Retaliation),[7] Bell's First Law of Usenet, Moen's Law of Corrections,[8] Tober's Lor, Gaudere's Law, Naruki's Law and Greenrd's Law. Muphry's Law has also been called Merphy's Law.
Muphry's Law may be interpreted to be in accordance to a previous quote from Ambrose Bierce:
In neither taste nor precision is any man's practice a court of last appeal, for 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". ("Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults" 1909)[9]
Muphry's law was brought to many people's attention when it was cited by Stephen J. Dubner in the Freakonomics section of The New York Times in July 2008, when he described accusing The Economist of a typo in referring to Cornish pasties being on sale in Mexico, assuming that "pastries" had been intended. The Economist responded by sending him a Cornish pasty.[10] As Dubner's fault was the result of ignorance (of the existence of pasties), rather than a typo or grammatical error, it might be said that it was not within the spirit of Muphry's law, as made more explicit by McKean's law. However, proper editing and proofreading encompass fact-checking as well as spelling and grammatical errors; thus, McKean's law may be considered a corollary or special case of Muphry's.
A variation states that flaws in a printed or published work will only be discovered after it is printed and not during proofreading.[11]
See also
References
- ^ "Muphry's law". Canberra Society of Editors newsletter. November 2003. http://www.editorscanberra.org/Nov03.htm#muph. Retrieved on 2008-07-18.
- ^ Mackenzie, Janet (2004). The Editor's Companion. Cambridge University Press. pp. 123. ISBN 0521605695. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CSUtOYO9AmAC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=muphry's+law&source=web&ots=3LZqVxQ7Js&sig=uFcShvjNTWpThLHWc_PRsLEyacs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA123,M1. Retrieved on 2008-07-19.
- ^ a b Bangsund, John (March 1992). "Scenes of editorial life: Muphry's law". John Bangsund's Threepenny Planet. http://home.pacific.net.au/~bangsund/muphry.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-18.
- ^ "Erin McKean (quoted from Verbatim)". Wordspy. http://www.wordspy.com/WAW/McKean-Erin.asp. Retrieved on 2008-07-19.
- ^ Quinion, Michael (10 November 2001). "Verbatim". World Wide Words newsletter (596). http://www.worldwidewords.org/reviews/verbatim.htm. Retrieved on 2009-03-25.
- ^ Quinion, Michael (19 July 2008). World Wide Words newsletter (596). http://www.worldwidewords.org.uk/. Retrieved on 25 March 2009. "Erin McKean, who edits Verbatim Magazine in her spare time from being editor of the Oxford American Dictionary, has coined a close relative, which is known as McKean’s Law: “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.”".
- ^ a b Liberman, Mark (April 4, 2005). "Hartman's Law Confirmed Again". Language Log. http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/002035.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-13.
- ^ Moen, Rick (2008-07-31). "Moen's law of Corrections". Obfuscation Mitigation (Lexicon). http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-corrections. Retrieved on 2008-10-13.
- ^ Zimmer, Benjamin (2005-11-12). "Bierce's law?". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002641.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-19.
- ^ Dubner, Stephen J. (2008-07-15). "Pasties, Pasties, Everywhere". The New York Times: Freakonomics. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/pasties-pasties-everywhere/. Retrieved on 2008-07-21.
- ^ Bloch, Arthur (May 18, 2000). Murphy's Law: Lawyers: Wronging the Rights in the Legal Profession!. PSS Adult. ISBN 084317580X.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
