On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 08:11:21PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > You will find that when you point out the correct spelling to those who > use this one, the response is not "oh, whoops," like it would be for a > mistake. Rather, it's usually a rant of surprising vitriol, a bunch of > bizarrely constructed justifications for why their spelling is correct, > and an insistence on continuing to use it. You can see that happen on > this very thread. > That means "mistake" is clearly not the correct term. > I find the correct term a bit mysterious, partly because I don't > understand the impulse, but I suspect it's much closer to "dog-whistle" > [1] or "tribal marker" than "mistake." > The reactions of others is not about the spelling difference, which is > obviously trivial. It's about the refusal to change, the insistence on > mislabeling something, and the surprising anger and oddly twisted defenses > that ensue afterwards, making it clear that this is a marker of something > much deeper and much darker than just a trivial mistake. So... a shibboleth. ;) -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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