Obviously the wrong place to ask, but I couldn't think how to google it offhand

[cimorene]

Is there a word for the type of error (or, well, violation of the rules of standard usage) caused by a rule of standard usage that's different for written than for spoken language (ie inadvertently non-standard because the writer isn't aware that written usage is different)? I tend to think of this as a "doesn't read enough" error, but there could be a real name, couldn't there?

Comments

[zana16]

Can you give an example? I’m not sure I follow what you mean.

[cimorene]

Well, it's so very general that it feels a little silly since an example can't really be representative - it's all the rules of standard written English! - but someone below named phonetic misspelling and eggcorns, but there are also punctuation rules such as the ones for commas and dependent and independent clauses, as well as all the differences in non-standard dialects (like, say, "might could"). The last unusual example I noticed was the increasingly common British phrasing "to be sat", ie "she was sat in a chair", which is apparently filtering into casual writing from speech.

[princessofgeeks]

I am not aware of a name for this, no.

When I used to discuss this in class I would talk about level of formality, the idea of a vernacular, and knowing the audience. But I don't know of a formal name for this type of error. On the other hand all my formal education was journalism. There may be a linguistics term for it. Sometimes it's related to an actual identified dialect or codeswitching.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I would say it's often a part of someone's dialect. The further the dialect is from mainstream or standard, the more differences they have to keep track of if they want to produce standard formal writing! Not that I think that should be required super broadly, but journalism is definitely a field where a lot of it is still needed (and where there are a lot of egregious mistakes, now more than ever since copy editors and proofreaders started being fired everywhere - but I remember as a child I could've gone through the local paper with a red pen).

Fiction, of course, is a great venue for non standard usage, but it has to be on purpose! I often think that a fic could so easily have been written entirely in character voice instead of obviously trying for standard usage (unnecessarily) and then FAILING, which is just so irritating and embarrassing to read.

[msilverstar]

The thing that comes to my mind is "could of", and I don't know the technical term for that.

[cimorene]

That could arguably be an example of an eggcorn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

But it's so common it could be an ordinary phonetic misspelling, I guess. Those are a big sub category.