As a person who dictates about 25 pages of progress notes daily, I have noticed that occasionally I fail to say what I mean. Sometimes I say the opposite of what I mean. Sometimes what I say makes no sense at all. I have heard recordings of speeches I have written out and practiced and, even in these, I sometimes garble a sentence to the point of incoherence. When I type my own lecture notes, sometimes I will leave out a word, or misplace a modifier, or mangle syntax. I'm just stupid that way. It makes me worthy of contempt, I know. If I had a few hundred journalists going over everything I said for the last eight years, I hate to think how badly my mental retardation would be exposed. Slips of the tongue and pen clearly invalidate any success I may seem to have in life.

Kent