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Who says this stuff? I live in the Northeast USA and I've never heard of
this phrase. I've heard "erred on" before, but mostly misused as
"inadvertently favored".
Whatever the case, writing the way people talk is fine and dandy, hunkey
dorey, yippie skippy, and OOOOOO-TAY for informal writing (like this here
gosh dern e-mail thing-a-ma-bob), but when it comes time to put pen to paper
(so to speak) and write down something everyone should be able to
understand, you need to use easy to understand language.
Sure, I doubt anyone would not understand what you mean by "errored out",
but to be honest, I and seemingly several others as well stumbled over both
these phrases. The communication may succeed, but not without bumps and
jitters, and ideally that's not what you want.
All IMO, of course.
Bill Swallow
wswallow "at" nycap "dot" rr "dot" com
::: -----Original Message-----
::: > Isn't the obvious solution, then, to ask *them*?
:::
::: Not really. I mean, this is primarily a spoken term, and
::: I'm supposed to
::: be the writer-type-guy, right? So I find they typically
::: look to ME to
::: determine how this stuff is put into print.
