Skitt's Law

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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
or more generally
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

  1. Google Groups - alt.usage.english archive
  2. Language Log - Hartman's Law confirmed again
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  

Conservapedia:   DeMyer's Laws  -  Schlafly's Law  

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