Millennial
All Posts,  Soapbox

Auto Correct Is A Pain In The Neck

I’ve never been a fan of things that interfere with my ability to say what I want to say and to say them the way I want to say them. Back in the good old days, before auto correct, that just meant I used to turn off spell checker and rely on my own ability to spell.

I didn’t like spell checker for two reasons. One – because I prided myself on my ability to spell correctly without help. Two – because it persisted in changing the way I spelt things from English spelling to the American version. For more information on the differences between the two you can go here.

Australia is a constitutional monarchy with the queen of England as our head of state. Because of that I sang God save our Queen at school assemblies and I was taught to write using English spelling. I admire the queen of England and I’m loyal to her. When she dies I won’t feel the same about whoever succeeds her but, until then, I’m loyal to the crown. I consider English spelling to be the correct spelling and I strongly resented having my CORRECT spelling of words changed to what I considered INCORRECT spelling. It was like being told I got the word wrong when it wasn’t true! I hated being told I was wrong when I knew I wasn’t. I still don’t use spell checker. Ever!

I want to write colour not color, apologise not apologize, analyze not analyse, licence not license, paedophile not pedophile, litre not liter, behaviour not behavior and so on.

That means, I’m sad to say, that my writing tends to carry the dreaded red underline when my English spelling is deemed incorrect by American spell checker programmes. (YES – I said programme and I meant programme not program – that’s just one more English VS American spelling difference!).

Much as I hated spell checker, however, it doesn’t hold a candle to my feelings about Auto Correct!

My original title for this entry was ‘Auto Correct Is An Arsehole’ but auto correct turned that into ‘Auto Current Is An Apple’ – WTF?!

I decided to change the title because Auto Correct is just a tool and calling it names seems a bit unfair. I changed the title to ‘Auto Correct Is A Pain In The Arse’ but auto correct changed that to ‘Auto Correct Is A Passion In The Addressee’ which makes even less sense than Auto current is an apple.

I decided to go with a title that doesn’t contain any swear words but auto correct “corrected” that to ‘Auto Correct Is A Passion In The Neck’. Not sure how anyone could ever have passion IN the neck but auto correct obviously thinks it’s a possible interpretation of what I wrote. Passion ON the neck would make more sense if you ask me. People do give each other hickeys which could be interpreted as passion on the neck. Passion in the neck? That seems like a dark place to go so I won’t go there and I don’t think auto correct should either hehehe.

I wish I could switch auto correct off but it does come in useful at times. It saves me typing all the letters for long words like psychologist for example. When it gets it right it’s useful but it seems to be getting it more and more wrong these days.

It used to be simple things that auto correct got wrong and, technically, they weren’t really wrong as they were still real words.

It would turn if to of, it to if, off to of, our to or, or to it and so on. A nuisance but not that big a deal. Usually. There were exceptions and the exceptions could sometimes raise your heart rate and make your eyes pop.

The other day for example, when texting with my brother about how his family was coping with the cold, I pressed enter without checking what damage auto correct had done and was horrified to see I’d sent him the message that ‘I hate the child’ instead of ‘I hate the cold’!

I almost choked on my coffee and hurried to correct auto correct so my brother wouldn’t think I was talking about my little nephew!

Another time I was texting my daughter who was stuck on a plane waiting for a delayed take off. She told me all the planes had to line up and she was seated with children on either side of her and one of them was crying.

Auto correct changed her messages to ‘All the planes have to longer up. I have kids on either side of me sand one one theme a cries.’

Auto correct used to at least make some kind of sense but not any more. ‘I gave him a towel’ becomes ‘I have him a towel’, ‘put it away’ turns into ‘out it away’, ‘booked her in’ degenerates into ‘booked get in’ and ‘the heating is gas’ turns into nonsense ‘the heating is has’.

But wait – there’s more!

‘It all seems to be OK’ turned into ‘It all send to be OK’, ‘I’m betting the heating is electric’ became ‘I’m being the heating as electric’, ‘Have you emptied her litterbox’ morphed into ‘Have you emptied get litterbox’ and ‘How is Jane’s jet lag’ made no sense auto corrected to ‘How is Jane’s her lag’.

When texting my brother about computer problems I texted “I try to register and the capture icon comes up but there’s no option to fill it out.” That auto corrected to “I try to register and the capture icon Congress up but there’s no option to fill out out”.

Auto correct has even taken to INVENTING words! How is it auto correct if there is no such word? It corrected ‘maybe’ to naybe’ – wtf is naybe? I don’t think that’s a real word in any language let alone correct English!

The last word in nonsense goes to the auto correct version of “What password?” though which turned into “Wendy pairwise?” and I’m damned if I can even begin to guess where auto correct got that from!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.