Her mother pounced in a cloud of perfume and carried her inside, calling back over her shoulder to Valerie in her husky voice, mistaking her for some kind of paid nanny, or pretending to.
And when we apologize for our wrongdoing, it requires having to admit that we behaved in a way that was contrary to the positive way we think about ourselves, which could lead to passive-voice "mistakes were made" apologies, or the infamous "if apologies" -- apologizing if other people were offended or hurt.
They exist in the passive voice, the "mistakes were made" voice: "The camera recorded you".
But for once the novel's supposedly omniscient narrative voice is mistaken.
As humans they will sometimes raise their voices, make mistakes, be distracted and be busy.
For instance, if a straight man with a lisp and a high-pitched voice is mistaken for being gay during a job interview, he would be legally protected from discrimination if Congress passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
DINO TIME A time machine sends three contemporary kids back to the Cretaceous era, where a motherly Tyrannosaurus rex (with the voice of Melanie Griffith) mistakes them for her own offspring.
The latest "Feminine Mistake" (Voice; $24.95), by the journalist Leslie Bennetts, means to be a corrective to such correctives.
Though recorded when she was barely out of her teens, she sang it with a strength and finesse that earned her a reputation as a soul powerhouse; her voice was often mistaken for that of a black woman or a man.
Though he hadn't mentioned all twenty horses by the half-mile mark, he had made it this far without any mistakes or voice cracks.
The following correction was published on 27 November 2011 Last weekk's profile of Kate Bush ("The return of pop's most resonant voice", Comment) contained several mistakes.
