We’re all capable of making typos or grammatical errors. Even major, embarrassing errors can be the result of working quickly or spacing out, rather than indicating a lack of literacy, if they occur rarely. And proofreading skill is not distributed equally among the population.

Some rules of grammar are confusing  — who knows whether it’s lie, lay, laid, whatever? And who cares? And some rules are archaic or ignored by nearly everyone. I would not bother to blog about someone’s failure to use whom instead of who, for example. Most educated people I know only use the former in “To Whom It May Concern.” Any other use usually seems artificial, posturing, too formal for our casual society, even in business.

But there are other errors that do allow us to draw conclusions, pinpoint causes. Years ago, when I taught remedial grammar review at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, I was surprised that so many of my students wrote “could of” when they meant “could’ve.” They weren’t stopping to think about what it was they were trying to express. “Could of” can’t mean “could have.” The reason for their error was that “could of” and “could’ve” sound the same, and “of” popped into their heads as the most common word that sounds like that. What it clearly indicated was their lack of visual familiarity with their native language. They weren’t used to seeing the words, only hearing them. When I say that they weren’t used to seeing the words, I mean they didn’t read. Anything.

So this error, on a pamphlet for swimming lessons that I picked up a week ago, shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. It just never would’ve occurred to me to spell it this way. I think it has the same cause as “could’ve” and “could of,” a case of the ears spelling a word or phrase that the eyes, having not read enough, cannot dispute.

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