Sunday, December 04, 2022

The Mysteries of Auotcorrect

We have all seen posts about  hilarious autocorrects, and I have even posted one or two entries in the past. 

They can be funny. One friend was trying to type boredom in a text to his wife. She was totally confused to read bone donkey. We laughed, but try as he might, he could not replicate it. 

I am such a bad typist that I get a lot of weird replacements, but I don’t keep track of them. I did get radiation this morning when I was trying for tradition, but that wasn’t a big deal.

Lately, however, I have been noticing words that I might reasonably expect to be corrected, but they haven’t been. 

For example: why aren’t apostrophe’s inserted for both cant and dont? And why isn’t a single i capitalized? Also, when would I ever want to type youre and not you’re?

I have typed both canada and christmas, not wanting to bother with the shift key and expecting both to be automatically corrected, but they haven’t been. 

Too often when I capitalize a a word, I often mistakenly include the second letter. I have recently ended up having to manually change JOhn, WHich (at the beginning of a sentence), and SUnday. Why?

I have deliberately tried to use the abbreviation re.  but I haven’t wanted  the next word to be capitalized. If I try to override the capital, autocorrect objects strenuously. I end up tricking it by not using a period before typing the next word. Once I have done that, I can go back and insert the period. Of course, this is a good reason to not even bother with the period after the re.

Then, just before writing this entry, I was commenting on a post. I wanted to name the artist, Emily carr and typed it wrong (as above), but autocorrect  knew enough to correct carr to Carr. But it will not correct wont or canada or christmas? Go figure.

I have to admit that it does give me a list of alternatives at the bottom of the screen, but when I am typing along, I don’t notice it, and I cannot think of times when either Christmas or Canada would not be properly capitalized.

i simply cant fathom or explain the mysterious ways of af croefect, er autocorrect.  

19 comments:

Jenn Jilks said...

There are some hilarious autocorrects out there!
I don't use it much, as it doesn't appear on my laptop. I've been tying message for JB, to send to the antigun range group. He cannot spell well enough to even use autocorrect on his iPad. We are a team!

Marie Smith said...

I totally argue.

Tom said...

I'm guessing autocorrect is managed by a bunch of Millennials . . . and of course they don't know their grammar, don't know how to spell, so we get all these mistakes.

Barbara Rogers said...

I've noticed that Blogger no longer has any spellcheck. So frequently I have to go to a dictionary app to figure out how many letters are doubled, or is it an "a" or an "e" or an "i" in the middle of a word I seldom use. Auto correct is only on my phone, so my text messages are a hoot. How anyone figures out what I meant to say is anyone's guess.

Debby said...

I once sent a message to a friend telling her a 'secret' and ending it with, "Don't rat me out, Sistah." Autocorrect changed that to "Don't eat me out, sistah!"

Oy.

And why oh why does my computer always question 'covid' of all things.

PipeTobacco said...

Hah! Wonderfully funny…. gave me a good chuckle!

PipeTobacco said...

I abhor the period -auto capitalize part of autocorrect for similar usages like you state. The double cap conundrum I have found is a result of being to slow to take one’s finger off the shift key (that term “shift key” is I guess rather old-timey now I guess). And, different programs autocorrect differently so that is a bit frustrating too as I can anticipate SOME, but with the variances, many slip through poorly.

PipeTobacco

Margaret said...

I've noticed that too. Cant, dont, wont, yet correcting other logical things to odd combinations of words. Was your post title deliberate? ;)

Boud said...

It's fun to just hit the suggested words and see where they take you so long time and we don't need it all decorate and go through your toes. See?

MARY G said...

I love Marie's comment.
My Really Really pet peeve is that I have to bring up another keyboard to even get an apostrophe. Yet I can access an exclamation mark with a shift, even though I do not use it nearly as much as I use an apostrophe. Yes, indeed, design was done by someone with poor English skills.
(It is sometimes possible to advantageously split an infinitive.)

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

Very humorous post. I have fallen victim for all those kinds of auto corrects and had to go back and corret the auto corrects. I'm guessing "Tom" is onto something: the corrects are being managed by millennials who haven't learned spelling and grammar.

RedPat said...

Sometime the correction can be totally out of this world. You wonder where did they get that from.

William Kendall said...

My phone often mistakes is, and refills it as I'd.

I like the saying, Dear autocorrect: it is never duck.

DJan said...

I guess you intentionally misspelled the title? And it didn't correct it, I see. Autocorrect is a pain in the tush, if you ask me. :-)

Red said...

I guess I better check my stuff a little more carefully if that's going on. I have a few comments that go to spam. I check my spam every day for comments.

Ed said...

I get in trouble more with the word suggestions above my smart device keyboard that I do with autocorrect. I guess my fingers are too fat and I often hit a word up there instead of a letter in the top row of the keyboard. I have been trying to focus more on what I have written before hitting the send button but I still get in a hurry and believe that I'm a better smartphone typist than I actually have proven to be.

Kay said...

It's aggravating when I'm in a rush and send off a text to find later what a crazy thing I sent.

I often miss capitalizing my husband's name, Art and spell check won't correct that, of course.

Joanne Noragon said...

That re gets me, too.

Jeanie said...

I had to chuckle. Yes, we've all seen those mistakes, sometimes funny, sometimes downright crazy! And the phone/tablet word selections don't always make things much better!