Never correct?

Ever see commercials for "save up to 50% or more"? So which is it? Up to 50%? Or more than 50%?

Here's some neat software that takes what you say and types it on the screen for you. The only problem is its self-professed accuracy only goes "up to 99%".

Technically, this means that a word would never be written exactly as you wished. A word might be anywhere from 0% correct to almost all letters correct, but never ALL.

At least, that's what the item description implies. But I'm sure the actual accuracy level is 99% period. Almost all words will be typed as intended. On a good day.

Typing doesn't work??

The writers of the overview page for Opera made a simple but highly amusing (to me) mistake:

"Typing addresses for sites you visit frequently is ineffective."

Typing won't work, so you had better download Opera, which will create shortcut images for you.

No, really. I like Opera. But I usually prefer to type my URLs.

Mistake vs Error

While these two terms are often used interchangeably, there are situations in which one sounds awkward while the other sounds natural. There is, in fact, a slight different in meaning that is often irrelevant. Simply put, a mistake is something that someone does on accident, but would correct as soon as it's noticed, while an error is something that someone does unawares, and does not even know to be wrong. For example, I can arrive at a wrong answer by mistakenly adding 3 and 4 somewhere in the equation when I was supposed to multiply them. I can't think of an example of an error in logic, but you probably get the idea.

The comic that inspired this blog

My husband suggested I start this blog as a place to showcase the mistakes I find on the internet. Because I love editing, many will be simple typos on professional sites, but there will also be cases where I simply disagree with someone and want to lay out my argument. My posts will probably be variously boring, funny, and preachy. I have another blog where I'll put posts that don't fit this theme of criticism.