Yelena: I think the BOL entry is badly phrased. The implication is that such errors would ALWAYS abort the batch; but there is nothing to say that lower-severity errors wouldn't. Error severities in SQL Server are not actually related to how severe a given condition is, but are rather used more like categories. For example, severity 13 is for deadlocks. I personally think that deadlocks are pretty severe... and, by the way, they're batch-aborting if you happen to be the victim!

JLK: I'm not sure what you mean by "voracity" in this context, but I will say that Erland Sommarskog's article is absolutely the best resource on the topic, and I used it as a reference while writing my own chapter on the same. By the way, the other articles on that site are equally excellent--I highly recommend reading them all.