Errors

In Williams' essay on errors he emphasizes the fine line between knowing what a writing error is, and actually being able to follow every single grammatical rule. In the beginning of the essay, Williams talks about a William Zinsser who apparently used words like "atrocity" and "horrible" when describing common grammatical mistakes, in which Williams makes light of by saying things going on in Afghanistan and Cambodia are "horrible atrocities", not grammatical errors. I think the main point of the essay was to question the strict rules of grammar, because writing's main purpose should be simply to communicate with a reader, and not follow someone's made up guidelines for correct writing procedure. The essay continues on to discuss the fact that the very people who make up rules in writing, such as E.B. White, author of The Elements of Style, constantly contradict themselves by breaking their own rules. He does this to show that it is, quite frankly, impossible to not make any grammar mistakes in any piece of writing. He also locates errors with both readers and writers, and brings up an interesting point that authors make mistakes and even their editors, the people paid to find any mistakes, miss them on a regular basis. At the end of the article he even explains that the very essay that he wrote contained at least one-hundred mistakes, proving that it is simply an inevitability.