I often find myself making glaring errors, ones that I know are incorrect but make them anyway. It's usually caused by a desire to get a train of thought on paper before it disappears: poof! But I also enjoy reading writers who enjoyed playing with the language, particularly those who try to use words that have double and triple meanings that make sentence parsing a game, much like some people must enjoy doing crossword puzzles (of which I never found any enjoyment in). Henry Thoreau's Walden comes to mind. I don’t understand Maureen's style of writing; it is like a foreign language to me so I'd never have caught that error as she is one writer at the Times who I almost never read.

But I think we all are guilty of this kind of mistake from time to time; my wife makes a living correcting some of the works of some of the finest professors in the country. But one does expect perfection from marquee writers from the Times.

I personally admit to making glaring errors in comments sections and not getting worked up about it. Maybe that is a mistake we as nation are making, particularly with the new cell phone language whose users seem to enjoy using rebi.

I am constantly misusing their and there, even though I know how they are properly used, but this is mainly due to a desire to get a train of thought down before I lose it and then not taking the time to go back and proof my own work. I find the detailed work of proofing often very difficult to accomplish properly and often have to read some of what I have written several times before I catch all the errors in it. All us of have minds which work in slightly different ways and therefore the things that aggravate others are often unnoticed by others and vice-versa.

I'm not sure I have a point to make here, but just wanted to add some random thoughts to add to this discussion. The use of rebi by young adults does bother me quite a bit though. I can’t see it adding anything worthy to the English language, but seems to me to be more a form of debasement of the language.

do u c wht I mn?

Now that I've written all those random thoughts down, I went back and read Maureen's column in today's paper. I now understand completely the point you are making.

Maureen always did have a habit of calling the Clinton's pot black. She seems to get a special joy out of doing that kind of thing.

She wrote a column the other day about peeling a cucumber with Paul Newman which I'm sure that a few people would take as a subtle hint at something lewd about Paul Newman that we all know would be false.

I wrote a scathing comment (now that the Times has started accepting comments) referring to something very rude that the Rude Pundit wrote about Maureen some time back. Fortunately whoever edits the comments section didn't publish it.

And she certainly deserves your comment in this post, considering what she wrote about in today's column, even though you are being much too kind to her under the circumstances.

Yes, not bad, but nothing in creation has ever beaten the LA Times critic who wrote a few years ago about the "special sexual cache" that Madonna had. Yes, yes, of course he meant cachet, but what a difference a letter makes! Carry on, in hard times.

John, your LA Times example is wonderful!

Personally I'm often writing in haste trying to make sure I get the idea written down before it slips away. When I feel like I've got everything I want to say typed in, then I go back and re-read it, and fix everything I find wrong. I keep doing that until I can read the entire thing front to back without finding any errors. It's admittedly a simple-minded strategy.

Apparently one eventually reaches the heights of writing fame where such obsessive editing is superfluous because someone else is paid to do it for you. But MoDo is a legitimate target when, say, Frank Rich wouldn't be, because she so often snidely attacks superficial traits and misses the deep meaning of the situation. Not always; I've read a few impressive columns by her. Perhaps I shouldn't have watched her on the Colbert show, where she struck me as kind of a political gossip columnist.

I should make one of my previous comments clearer, as the dictionary refers to the plural of rebus as rebuses. I just don't like the rhythm of that plural for some reason. As someone noted on the web, the plural of cactus is cacti and the plural of fungus is fungi - and I'd add that the plural of alveolus is alveoli, the plural of gladiola is gladioli, the plural of alumnus is alumni, and on and on, so I chose to ignore the dictionary and use traditional Latin technique to create my own plural of the word as I take exception with the dictionary in this instance. I hope no one is offended or misled by the word. I am not a traditional libertarian by any stretch of the imagination, except when it suits me with the use of words. Hopefully that will not lead to speaking in tongues.

If Pete Seeger’s song "English is crazy" were available on YouTube, I'd put it up on a blog post as sung by him, as I find it to have more impact as a song, but the lyrics will have to do in the comments section. In case anyone is interested.

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/p/peteseegerlyrics/englishiscurrayzeelyrics.html

As far as working over and over and over correcting the errors in my writing, sometimes I have to wait hours to be able to get back to the place where I was, or even never get back there, since I tend to wander off somewhere else quite often mentally, often even while reading the words of a book. But I'm working on solving that little problem for which there used to be no cure or help for. We'll see. Maybe there still isn't.

Chuck, let me add another comment to your comment about "fixing everything" before you post it. The creative part of writing is what I find to be the most enjoyable part of learning the craft. In the fast paced world of blogging, particularly political blogging, we often only have a short time to get a post up and then it is time to move on to the next post. But I tend to enjoy thinking about the words that I use, and refining them, and gaining new insights by turning the thoughts around in my head and gaining new insights into what was previously written and furthing refining the thoughts and the way the thought is conveyed. Deadlines make this kind of writing impossible, but if one looks at some of the handwritten old first drafts of some of the great writers from earlier times, we often find that there is a constant process of refinement of the conveyance of their thoughts. Sometimes the creative process can get in the way of the correctness part and blogging is definitely not conducive to the very best writing. This is not true of every post I put up, but is definitely true on a very few of them, so I am constantly changing things for a day or two to get the words and the phrasing of ideas just right. If I had weeks to engage in this process, it would be even more enjoyable, at least for me.

And of course, there's always the Hunter Thompson style of Gonzo journalism if all those stories are true. I'm not sure what to call the process he used, Gonzo seems to simplistic a word to use for his style, but Gonzo dispensed with all the rules, at least according to what Hunter Thompson has claimed.

I don't know about "rebi," Buck, but "rebuses" doesn't float my boat either. My theory, based on a dim memory of some spelling rule about double esses that an English teacher tried to get through my head in 1948, is that it ought to be spelled "rebusses" unless you want it to rhyme with "abuses." Same way with school busses. And what would a Victorian lad in love smother his Victorian lassie with? Buses?

On the other hand, what the hell do I know? I was 23 when I finally figured out that "misled" wasn't the past tense of the verb "to misle" at all, and therefore couldn't be expected to rhyme with drizzled.

It occurs to me, now that we're on the subject, that there's a very good reason why I spotted Dowd's misspelling in the first place. For years I've been collecting, for reasons known only to the Great Giant Head, what I call portmanteau words. These are words, like "therapist," which are composed of other complete words. My all time champion was "loathesome," which packed five words into one, and in two different ways. Or did until I discovered there was no "e" in it.

Other examples: What Richard Mellon Scaife should do with his money: fundamental hospital… Gertrude needed someone to keep house and Alice washerwoman… The penis: mightier than the sword? … I don't care what you say about illegal immigrants, they keep the groundswell… Is them weeknights? Nope, themselves.

Well, you get the idea. What I'm trying to provoke here is manslaughter. Suggestions and additions welcomed.

Richard Mellon Scaife's wife is doing everything she can to milk the husbandry. Mr. Scaife had to go to that pay by the hour motel to meet the mistress to make the husbandry possible for both he and his wife.

I realize that husbandry doesn't quite make the rule since it needs an extra d to be perfectly correct, but I made an exception for Mr. Scaife since he's always getting exceptions for himself.