I have a theory, a theory that spell checkers are losing the ability to recognise intelligent English. I write a lot of words each year, either in stories, blog entries and stuff for websites that you tend to notice these things. For example, if it type ' I contemplate' I get the suggestion is it 'I co temp latte', thanks for that Mr Spellchecker, take a reasonable statement and change it into gibberish or gibbering as you suggested. Unfortunately it recognises lol, without a problem, WTF is ok too and ROTFL works like a dream but try and type I. (See, it's just done it again, I went to type 'in' and it automatically changed it to capital 'I' and a full stop, it's mental!) so I'll try again, try and type in establishment and half way through it suggests 'establish mints', no Mr Smart Tablet I'm not about to establish a mint based business or indeed any type of fresh minty venture now or in the future.
It's getting so annoying, I'm spending more time backtracking errors as I type than I used too but keep the language simple and it's fine, use common slang and it's fine, type well known names though and a whole new section kicks in. I type in motorhead and it automatically changes it to Motörhead, type burger king and you get the above as it changes it to the Burger King brand. What if I had wanted to call somebody who loves cars a motor head? Well then I have to do an extra click on the little cross to ignore the suggestion, quite often I have to do this three or four times a paragraph with various words. Let's try an experiment, I'll type a sentance and accept all the suggestions shall I?
'Mary had a little lamb which she wheeled around in a pram as it munched on luncheon spam'
Nothing, not a bloody thing autocorrected or suggested, what's wrong with it? Why does it never do it when you want it to? Ok, let's up the English a little and look for alternative words to include. Let's ask it for an alternative synonym of 'little', you know, maybe 'small' or 'miniature' anything to help. No, instead I get this.
Hmm, back to the advertising with Littlewoods and Little Mix, not very helpful on the English front are we? Imagine growing up and having a spell checker leap in on everything you do, it's going to be pretty difficult to learn just what is right and wrong, no wonder it's easier just 2 spk lk ths, it fools the spellchecker and suggests nothing to replace it, yay! So th rst ov th blg wil b wri10 lk ths..
'Twice a he err we all go to the seaside to eat an I. Cream' a complete. -We form of writing I'm sure.'
Having trouble reading it? You're not alone as the spellchecker has made plenty of mistakes, it actually says quite boringly 'Twice a year we all go to the seaside to eat an I scream' - a completely new form of writing I'm sure. You may have also noticed with this paragraph it has annoyingly changed ice cream to 'I scream' and again and typing this paragraph for a third time (yawn) it had another go and did this...
Aaaargh!
I scream ( I meant I scream that time ) at the stupidity of it all sometimes and I'd like to think that it actually helps but personally I remember looking up words in a dictionary that I didn't know and that helped me more to not only spell words but also I got the bonus of understanding what the word meant. Spellcheckers seem a little too far removed from all that and sometimes they also seem to be a cosmic communication device to another world after typing in continuation and getting constipation the other week. I got a really random one a few weeks ago when I typed Voodoo and got back Who Do, so I retyped Voodoo and got a reply You Do.
Smart arse, damn thing also thinks it's a poet.
www.petersmithcollective.co.uk Home Of Foreverbunny and the Impossimals
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