rom the needs, biases, and intentions of readers.The remainder of this ar- ticle, therefore,will elaborateon extra-textualissues. In particular,I concen- trate on what the interviews illuminate the most: the ways in which readers apparentlyuse errorsto construct the writer'sethos within the context of the business community. Toclarifythisnotion,Imustfirstidentifythemostpervasivethemefound in the interviews,what I call the "meaning/image"theme. This theme is the bottom line as to why errorsbother readers:Errorscreate misunderstandings ofthetext'smeaning,andtheyharmthe imageofthewriter(andpossiblythe organizationto which the writer belongs). Image,as I will explain shortly,in- volves severalextra-textualissues, but I want to stress that all subjects drew on bothways of reactingto an error,indicating the extent to which these con- cepts-textual meaningandthewriter'simage-are fundamentalto anydefi- nition of error gravity.Each subject noted that some errors were definitely confusing (especiallythe syntactic errors)or,more commonly,momentarily interruptedthe flow of readingenough to slow communication. Charlessaid of one fragment:"Itslows me down and confuses me; I have to go back and do it again, and then I have to say, 'What are they really trying to tell me?"'As noted earlier,some readersconsider these meaning-hamperingerrorsto be the most serious,perhapsthe onlyones worthyof much concern.
But the interviews indicate such errorsare not the only types leading to negativereactions.The subjectsfrequentlyaccounted foreven the most nega- tivescoresnotbydiscussingtheirconfusion
The interviews suggest, in fact, that the extent to which errorsharm the writer'simageismoreseriousandfar-reachingthanmanystudentsandteach- ers might realize. At times, the subjects stated in very general terms that er- rors affect a person'scredibilityas a writer or employee. More often, though,
thesubjectsnotedspecificimageproblems,which