Laws and sayings

(Last change: 12 January 2024.)


I’ve always enjoyed “laws” and axioms along the lines of Murphy’s Law (and Ashleigh Brilliant’s “Pot-Shots” postcards). Here are a couple of my own devising.

This page used to also include several quotes from my sardonic pal Jack Mantis, but I’ve now moved those to a separate Mantis Speaks page on the Words & Stuff site.

  • Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.
  • Hartman’s Rule About Rules: Every rule, including this one, has at least one exception.
  • Hartman’s Law of Mail Urgency: If you wait long enough to go through your mail, none of it is urgent.
    • Corollary: If any of your mail turns out to be urgent, then you haven't waited long enough.
  • Once something exists in electronic form, it’s only a matter of time before it appears on the web.

Through the miracle of parallel evolution, other people may have come up with the above items as well, but to the best of my knowledge they were original when I thought of them.

Or, as archy the cockroach once wrote:

archy is it original
it was once i answered truthfully
and may be again
                            archy