Muphry's law

Not to be confused with Murphy's law.

Muphry's law is an adage that states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."[1] The name is a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law".

Names for variations on the principle have also been coined, usually in the context of online communication, including:

  • Umhoefer's or Umhöfer's rule: "Articles on writing are themselves badly written." Named after editor Joseph A. Umhoefer.[2]: 357 
  • Skitt's law: "Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself." Named after Skitt, a contributor to alt.usage.english on Usenet.[3]
  • Hartman's law of prescriptivist retaliation: "Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror [sic]." Named after editor and writer Jed Hartman.[3]
  • The iron law of nitpicking: "You are never more likely to make a grammatical error than when correcting someone else's grammar." Coined by blogger Zeno.[4][5]
  • McKean's law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."[6] Named after editor Erin McKean.
  • Bell's first law of Usenet: "Flames of spelling and/or grammar will have spelling and/or grammatical errors." Named after Andrew Bell, a contributor to alt.sex on Usenet.[7]

Further variations state that flaws in a printed ("Clark's document law") or published work ("Barker's proof") will only be discovered after it is printed and not during proofreading,[2]: 22, 61 [8] and flaws such as spelling errors in a sent email will be discovered by the sender only during rereading from the "Sent" box.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference bang was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Dickson, Paul (1989). The Official Rules: 5,427 Laws, Principles, and Axioms to Help You Cope with Crises, Deadlines, Bad Luck, Rude Behavior, Red Tape, and Attacks by Inanimate Objects. Addison-Wesley.
  3. ^ a b Liberman, Mark (April 4, 2005). "Hartman's Law Confirmed Again". Language Log. Retrieved 2009-02-13.
  4. ^ Dr Techie. "Discussion Forums | Phrase confused #39". Wordorigins.org. Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  5. ^ Liberman, Mark (2006-04-26). "Language Log: Who is the decider?". Itre.cis.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
  6. ^ Quinion, Michael (10 November 2001). "Verbatim". World Wide Words Newsletter (596). Retrieved 2009-10-19. Erin McKean described what she calls McKean's Law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."
  7. ^ "Is there a name for this law? (spelling nitpick will itself contain spelling mistake)". 8 August 2005. Retrieved 2014-11-10.
  8. ^ Bloch, Arthur (May 18, 2000). Murphy's Law: Lawyers: Wronging the Rights in the Legal Profession!. PSS Adult. ISBN 0-8431-7580-X.