What Really Is Error Anyways Most people believe that error is a standard spelling, punctuati on, and grammar

mistakes but that is not true, anything can create error. What is error really and how do we know that what we are taught in school is true? Th roughout grade school, error was cut and dry, punctuation, spelling, sentence st ructure and formatting. Error has gray areas and can become very complicated. Mi nor errors were the main focus during grade school but now that we are in colleg e error could be so many different issues. Dictionary.com describes error as, a d eviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech. Everyon es view on what error is different because its based on how error is interpreted i nto your writings. For example error varies based on your reader and their idea of error. The rules for error didnt just come out of nowhere. According to the article, The Phenomenology of Error, Williams says, error is a construct set of ideas woven t ogether 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 thinki ng that are constructed to look unavoidable. Based on what Williams says, I beli eve that understanding error is an important aspect of writing but I would not t ake every rule I have learned about error and say that they should all be held t o the highest of values. Certain rules for error are important to follow but oth ers should be to the discretion of the writer because after all, its your work a nd your writing should be perceived by a reader, how you want them to be read an d not how people believe they should be. You must know the rules in order to ben d or break them to your writing needs. People should reexamine the construct of error; the concepts of error are from s o long ago they need to be revised to todays writing standards. The handbook for error could include so many rules but who is to say that when you write a paper you are going to follow every rule. The chances of you writing a paper and follo wing each rule that has been woven together over the years are slim to none. Jus t because a bunch of people got together along time ago and said these are the r ules for error doesnt mean that we need to follow them to a tee and it doesnt mean that we cannot make or add our own rules. The rules for error could use some se rious revising. Certain rules throughout the years are important such as word us age; you must know when to use there vs. their and theyre, affect vs. effect. Con fusing words of that sort are similar but have very different meanings one shoul d know the difference between. Some things are meant to stay around forever whil e others are meant to be tossed right out the window. Rules about spelling and w ord usage are important but rules about punctuation can vary based on the writin g 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 famo us 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 pa per may have underlying mistakes that you may not catch. Once your mistakes hav e been pointed out to you take the time to go back and fix your errors that way you have a better paper. Even after your paper has been edited and you made you r 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. We write in 140 characters eliminating details, sources and punctuation. This ha s 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 hav e in essence created a slang language through all our social networking and text ing 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 anyway? 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 which rules work and which do not. Error does pl ay a key role in writing a paper, just like the connection Williams made with ba seball errors. If you make to many mistakes in your writing it will lower the st andard of your work. So think before you write, think about everything you know and consider all sources you can make mistakes through. But you must try and mak e a minimal amount of them so you can have the best writing possible. 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