April 24, 2008
McKean’s Law at work
I was just searching the archives to see if a particular link had already been posted (it had), when I came across this perfect comment, on a post about eggcorns:
You’ve managed to totally bung up two seperate idioms in one sentance. You say “by enlarge”, and “manner from heaven”… the correct set of figures of speech which you’re attempting to use are “by-and-large” (an old nautical term, meaning everything in view), and “mana from heaven”, (mana being a biblical food provided to the Isrealites in the desert in the book of exodus.
Said comment is not only a shining example of a completely missed joke, but also a virtual love song to McKean’s Law, aka Skitt’s Law, which states, “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.”
Let’s just savor this moment again. Thank you, well-meaning but not terribly perceptive Tim, for brightening my afternoon!
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ah, Tim, where are you now?