Bruce,
   It is useful in composition to distinguish between revising, which
means something like "changing a text to make it more profound and
effective" and "corecting", which usually means something like
"changing a text to make it conform to decontextualised standards." 
The research on writing tends to show that better writers expect to
revise considerably and that less effective writers tend to try to
improve words and sentences apart from those larger concerns. (Get out
the thesaurus.  Check spelling and so on.) These goals can even be at
odds with each other, as they might be when we say "that's an effective
sentence fragment."
    Correcting is an on-off switch, whereas revising is more like a dimmer
switch.  We can take text that already works (not noticably deficient)
and still work on it.  It's more like getting closer to a goal than it
is like finding mistakes.  Point-of-view certainly may seem wrong, but
it may also take us quite some time to fine-tune the nuances, to bring
it into focus. One day we're happy, the next day we're not so sure.
    They both involve standards, but it's a different mind frame.
Composition has an uncomfortable relationship with grammar because we
have yet to devise an attention to rhetoric that fully integrates the
sentence.
   Your mother tells you not to shout, but you see she's in danger, so you
shout. The situation requires it. If you worry about being correct,
she's dead/

Craig

Thank you for your responses to my amazement caused by the jumbled words.
> I was
> most enlightened by Craig's pointing out that we "correct" point-of-view,
> topic
> flow, content problems with writing before we even consider such things as
> syntax and spelling.  I hope you will forgive me using the word "correct"
> for
> "improve" or make more effective.  The idea of a standard is there whether
> we
> want to admit it or not.  The "standard" is something we measure the
> corpora
> against.  It's just that some standards are more important than others.
> (I
> apologize for intentionally making "revealed" secondarily salient -- just
> having
> fun.)
>
> Bruce
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 03/20/06 1:19 PM >>>
>
> Roger Brown did an experiment a long time ago that he reported in an
> article
> titled "The 'Tip of the Tongue' Phenomenon".  He drew from the Brown
> University
> Corpus a set of words of at least seven letters found less often than 4 in
> 1,000,000 words of text.  He then gave definitions of them and asked
> freshman
> Psych students at Harvard to write down the word.  If they thought they
> knew the
> word but couldn't identify it precisely (It was on the tip of the tongue)
> then
> they were to write down every word that came to mind until they found the
> word
> or time ran out.  He then did an analysis of the words they wrote, and he
> discovered that the most memorable letters were the first and the last,
> the
> second most memorable were the second and the second-last, etc.  The least
> memorable were the middle letters.  In Bruce's example, note that the
> first and
> last letters of each content word are correct.  Word length is also
> correct, and
> the rest is anagrammed.  That means we can identify the word pretty
> easily.  The
> hardest word for me in the quote was "rleaved" because of the switching of
> the
> internal <r> and <l>, which made me initially opt for "relieved", even
> though
> that didn't meet the anagram condition.  But placing the <l> second made
> it
> highly salient.Herb
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 2:42 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Language Change
>  Bruce,This isn't a direct reply to your question, but I thought it might
> be
> useful to introduce a distinction. People's ability to draw meaning from
> sentences like the one you quoted may be saying something about the
> process of
> reading in addition to, or even in some cases as opposed to, the process
> of
> spoken language comprehension. If someone walked up to you and attempted
> to say
> those words roughly as they are spelled ("roughly" given that some of the
> clusters are non-English-able), you probably would have a great deal more
> trouble figuring out what was going on. That does not, of course, mean
> that such
> studies are irrelevant to theories of grammar, only that their relevance
> has to
> be interpreted in reference to the status of reading as an activity in
> *some*
> regards separate from innate language use.Bill SpruiellDept. of
> EnglishCentral
> Michigan University
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce D. Despain
> Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006 9:21 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Language Change
>  Did anyone notice the grammatical errors in the excerpt I sent yesterday?
> I think there was a message in it about how our mind also seems to
> overlook
> grammar in trying to get meaning out of language.  The first phrase in the
> second sentence is dangling grammatically independent of the sentence to
> which
> it is attached.  It should probably be taken out as another sentence
> something
> like this:
>
> The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid was rcneltey rleaved by smoe
> rscheearch
> at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy.
>
> The rest of that sentence is also a bit awkward, so I'm sure this is not
> really
> the best solution.  Like a lot of what we do it was probably not felt
> important
> enough for a rewrite from the first draft (writer was uncomforatble in the
> new
> medium?).  Inadvertently this made a second very important point. Another
> message was in the message.  For a teacher it is like peeling an onion.
> Fix the
> first layer stuff first (like orthography), then the next layer will be
> revealed
> for revision.
>
> My question: is the next layer to be corrected the syntax and then the
> morphological and phonological niceties after that.  Does the syntax
> correct
> itself when we go directly to the semantics in making meaning?  Do we
> experiment
> with different syntax until the correct meaning pops out, or does thinking
> of
> the meaning naturally let only that one (correct) way come to the surface?
> Maybe
> different authors can be allowed to find their own way.
>
> I'm sure some of you can articulate this better than I have.
>
> Bruce
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bruce Despain
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 11:39 AM
> Subject: Re: Language Change
>
> We've talked about the formal constraints of grammar.  Look what's been
> going
> around on the Internet.  It demonstrates the kind of wiring built into the
> mind
> for processing the printed word:
>
> i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The
> phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde
> Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the
> olny
> iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
> The
> rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs
> is
> bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod
> as a
> wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
>
> Bruce
>
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