Tracy Keck Within this paper I am trying to defend my point of view about error.

Mo st people believe that error is just the standard spelling, punctuation, and gra mmar but that is not true anything can create error within your paper. The evide nce to back my claim about error is that the people who over time compiled the r ules for error have woven together many different ideas about error, but they ne ed to be updated as time goes on to keep up with the different generations who a dapt the rules of error among writing. Some people believe that the rules of err or once they are established that they should stay like that forever. The parts of my paper I think work really well is my conversation about how facebook, twit ter, and texting and the affects it has on our writing. The parts that I feel di dnt work as well as I planned is the part about mistakes that occur due to poor u sage. I would like readers to talk about there thoughts on error and if they see any of the statements I stated differently because we are all apart of the same generation to see the different ideas of my peers about my topic. If we had mor e time I think it would have been helpful to be able to take on two topics that compliment each other to make your writing easier so you could relate the two to gether.

Most people believe that error is just the standard spelling, pu nctuation, and grammar but that is not true anything can create error. What is error really and how do we know what we are taught in school is true? Throughout grade school error was always just punctuation, spelling, sentence structure an d formatting errors, but the truth is that error is very complicated. Minor erro rs were the main focus during grade school but now that we are in college error could be so many different gears we could go in. Dictionary.com describes error as, a deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech. E veryones view on what error is different because its based on how error is interpr eted into your writings. For example error varies based on your reader and their idea of error. The rules for what error is didnt just come out of nowhere. According to the arti cle The Phenomenology of Error Williams says, error is a construct set of ideas w oven together over time until they seem inevitable, the only way about thinking about a problem, when in fact they are not all inevitable but simple choices in thinking that are constructed to look unavoidable. Based on what Williams says I believe that error is an important aspect of writing but I would not take every rule I have learned about error and say that they should all be held to the hig hest of values. Certain rules for error are important to follow but others shoul d be to the discretion of the writer because after all its your work and your wr itings should be perceived how you want them to be and not how people believe th ey should be. People should reexamine the construct of error; because the concepts of error ar e from so long ago they need to be revised to todays writing standards. The handb ook for error could say so many things but who is to say that when you write a p aper you are going to follow every rule. The chances of you writing a paper and following every rule that has been woven together of the years are slim to none. Just because a bunch of people got together along time ago and said these are t he rules for error doesnt mean that we need to follow them to a tee. Those rules for error were created along time ago and could use some serious revising. Certa in rules throughout the years are important such as word usage you should know w hen to use there vs. their, affect vs. effect words along those lines that are s imilar but have different meaning you should know the difference between. Some t hings are meant to stay around forever while others are meant to be tossed out t he window. Important rules about spelling and word usage are important but rules about punctuation can vary based on the writing of the author.

Most people realize that while writing a paper you are going to create errors after all we are all human and we are far from perfect; even famou s authors create errors that is why they send their stories to editors to catch all their mistakes. You can read over your paper over and over again but you pap er may have underlying mistakes that you may not catch. Once your mistakes have been pointed out to you take the time to go back and fix your errors that way y ou have a better paper. Even after your paper has been edited and you made your corrections it is still likely that your paper contains errors. We were taught word usage and how to punctuate at such a young age when we did not fully understand the concepts behind it. We should be taught punctuat ion rules on an extreme level as college students because we will better underst and the concepts behind punctuation and how to use it properly in our writing. M ina Shaughnessy says, The failed sentences, then, could be taken as stages of lea rning rather than the failure to learn, but also as evidence that these writers are using writing as an occasion to learn. Teachers in high school never cared so much about the concept of our papers they only focused on the errors. They woul d not care that they covered your paper in red ink. When you get a paper back co vered in red ink you are afraid to write the next paper for that class. In book The Phenomenology of Error by Williams suggests that, compares error in w riting to errors in a baseball game. I think of the basics about baseball and tha n in turn reference those to the simple things you know about writing errors the re are some similarities. For people who dont have a love for the game may watch a game and something may get called that they are unaware of and not know why su ch a thing was called this in comparison is very similar to the underlying issue s that are hidden among writing errors that are not so widely known by everyone. Similar to the underlying details of writing many may only think of error as th e simple stuff but its much more complicated than that. Examples are when to us e affect vs. effect or each other vs. one another. We were all taught in grade s chool about the different uses and meanings of words so how do you know which on e to use its so hard to tell. The major one most people to this day struggle wit h is when to use there vs. their. After writing this paper I have seen the many affects error has on your writing skills. Our generation is very into social networking and texting. For this reas on our writing skills have gone down hill because we have a tendency to pull in our language from facebook, twitter, & texting into our writing we do in class. This has adversely caused students to have lower grades on papers because we are making careless errors throughout our papers due to the day and age we live in. We have in essence created a slang language through all our social networking a nd texting we do on a daily bases. My cousin, Missy Eberts, works in the admissions office at Malone College she ha s told me some students that have attempted to apply to the college have turned in applications with slang terminology and non capitalized words. The affects th at social networking and texting has on our lives these days and the adverse aff ects it has on our writing ability is out of control. We need to learn how to se parate our social life from our school life so that we avoid creating extremely unnecessary errors among our papers. Bring forward this slang terminology into o ur lives will not only affect the many errors it creates between our writing but also our future life after college. There is no benefit to bringing this langua ge any further the errors this creates needs to stay among social networking sit es and our cell phones and out of professional lives. So what was all this research about anyways it all goes back to the point that a ges ago people sat down and came up with the rules for error. These rules have g iven us a framework of what error really is and now we just need to take into co nsideration our day and age and what rules work and what ones dont. Error does pl ay a key role in writing paper just like the connection Williams made with baseb all errors. If you make to many mistakes in your writing it will lower the stand ard of your work. So think before you write think about everything you know and consider all sources you will make mistakes but try and make a minimal amount of them so you can have the best writing possibly.

1. Williams, Joseph. The Phenomenology of Error. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin s, 2011. 37-55. Print. 2. Shaughnessy, Mina. "The Study of Error." . National Council of Teachers of English, 1980. Web. 20 Jan 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/356486 .>. 3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/error?s=t