Skitt's Law
From RationalWiki
Skitt’s Law is a comment on the pedantry of some internet users.
| “ | Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself | ” |
| “ | The likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster. | ” |
Basically, people who try to issue corrections (particularly spelling and grammar) are likely to commit the same offense themselves, usually in the actual post where they're making the correction. In a malicious sense, this is a declaration of hypocrisy, in a less malicious sense, it's just Murphy's Law - that if you're going to correct someone's typo, this will be that one, inconvenient and embarrassing time you actually make a typo yourself.
It derives from the user "Skitt" on alt.usage.english, mentioned first in a message back in 1999.[1] It then got out into the wild following the three billionth time the thing about "ignoramii" not being a real word cropped up on the internet. Skitt's Law also has a guise in "McKean's Law," named after Erin McKean, which focuses entirely on spelling or grammatical issues: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."[2]
[edit] Corollary
Observational evidence of Skitt’s Law leads to the following corollary:
| “ | No matter how carefully or how many times you read your post, you will not notice at least one spelling or grammatical error until after you click submit. | ” |
Anyone who has published a book, submitted a dissertation or thesis, or had work printed in a peer reviewed journal will be well aware of this.
[edit] External links
[edit] Footnotes
| Articles on RationalWiki about Internet Laws | ||
|---|---|---|
| Arken's Law - Cohen's Law - Danth's Law - Gall's Law - Gibson's Law - Godwin's Law - Gore's Law - Grey's Law - Haggard's Law - Law of exclamation - List of Poe's Law examples - List of eponymous laws - Loi de Poe - Peter Principle - Poe's Law - Pommer's Law - Rove's Law - Scopie's Law - Shaker's Law - Skarka's Law - Sturgeon's Law - Timecube Law - Upton Sinclair's Law - Zeigler's Law
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