The ECMAscript standard[1] and the creator of the language[2] are pretty clear about it. From what I know of parsing, anything phrased in terms of adding token

The ECMAscript standard[1] and the creator of the language[2] are pretty clear about it. From what I know of parsing, anything phrased in terms of adding tokens post-lexing in order to make an invalid parse tree valid as opposed to encoding the semantics in the grammar itself is most definitely an error correction method. I think that a lot of the confusion comes from taking the term "error" personally. Nobody wants to be told that their programming style relies on "error correction" to be parsed, but it's just an implementation detail of the parser, not some kind of qualitative statement about your programming skills. Changing the name does not change how the parser works, and does not make anyone involved a better or worse programmer. [1]: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Ecma-262.pdf http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST... (PDF) , section 7.9 [2]: http://brendaneich.com/2012/04/the-infernal-semicolon/ http://brendaneich.com/2012/04/the-infernal-semicolon/, specifically "The moral of this story: ASI is (formally speaking) a syntactic error correction procedure."