Richard, Thanks for the source of the quote. I only heard it orally from Don. I must admit, when on NSF etc review boards, I wonder about proposers who describe themselves as `Principle Investigators'. It happens more often than you'd like to imagine. I never rejected a proposal outright because of that error. Being a poor typist, it takes me much time to get everything correct. Gio <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Richard P. Gabriel <<a href="mailto:rpg@dreamsongs.com">rpg@dreamsongs.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">At 18:37 -0700 9/2/10, Gio & Voy Wiederhold wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Don Knuth once told me (paraphrased): only people that don't write books write books without errors. </blockquote> </div> The passage in question is from a 100-word paragraph on the author's web front page dated May 11 in the form of a blurb for the book in question. In Knuth's universe of writers, this is much closer to someone who doesn't write books, and so the errors should be similarly small. A thousand errors of this variety in one of Knuth's books would be a little shocking, I think. In such a short and prominent piece of writing, one should be careful and it is possible to proofread in that case. Prof Ensmenger was quite gracious in his reply to my pointing out the typo, and he has corrected it. He made some interesting other remarks, so I would second the idea he would be a good speaker. I'd be interested to hear from those of you who believe it's preferable to have a mistake like this in a blurb for a book. -rpg- </blockquote></div> -- Gio Wiederhold <a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/people/gio.html">infolab.stanford.edu/people/gio.html</a>