proof-reading fun

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:53 PM -0800 3/30/05, David Colburn wrote:
>  >
>>  >"If you can drop me an e-mail that am to let me know when you'll be on
>>  >campus, I'll try to be in my office."
>>
>>
>>  I think this represents one of the problems of progress. I have actually had
>>  things like that make it into print.
>>
>>  It is so easy to make small changes in a ms.  I have sent copy off to
>>  editors, and taking one last look, make a small change in a word of phrase
>>  without noticing its effect on other parts of the sentence. In the olden
>>  days, when to change one word you needed to retype the entire page, such
>>  glitches didn't happen. Other ones did.
>
>I don't see the proof-reading problem in the quoted sentence, but I'll
>take another look at it tomorrow am, and maybe I'll notice something
>that I'm missing this pm.

I'm assuming it's the garden path initiated by taking "that *am*
to..." to involve a copula rather than the same sans-dot initialism
you use in your message.  I could be wrong, but I think this involves
the isograph between those who insist on "a.m."/"p.m." and those who
count on context to disambiguate "am".

L