Comments on: Beware the Spellchecker

By: Harald K

Harald K — Mon, 07 May 2007 07:10:51 +0000

A classic reported by a Christian newspaper here: Bishop Desmond Tutu – Bishop Demon Tut.

By: sara

sara — Mon, 07 May 2007 05:15:03 +0000

This is why I never use the damn thing (the automatic spellcheck bot). I do classical history and what the bot would turn Greek and Roman names into doesn’t bear thinking about. Probably medical terminology.

By: Fr.

Fr. — Sun, 06 May 2007 16:48:14 +0000

Cupertino effect (cf. comment #3): priceless.

By: Blix

Blix — Sun, 06 May 2007 03:02:13 +0000

I used to routinely make a typing mistake that spellcheck WOULDN’T catch. Instead of “does not” I would type a phrase concerning a female deer.

By: mrjauk

mrjauk — Sun, 06 May 2007 02:43:13 +0000

Word wanted to name a History Professor at Yale Ivy Banal.

By: mollymooly

mollymooly — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:53:24 +0000

#11: George Berkeley was not Catholic. Only Protestants could study at Trinity College Dublin until over 100 years after his death.

By: Dave Maier

Dave Maier — Sat, 05 May 2007 15:33:53 +0000

Heidegger = Headgear (that skullcap he used to wear, I imagine).

By: Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:50:54 +0000

More reason to use WordPerfect!

By: Miriam

Miriam — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:42:39 +0000

I remain fond of “Percy Bushel Shelley.”

By: Jacob Christensen

Jacob Christensen — Sat, 05 May 2007 12:33:47 +0000

At one point my Firefox spellchecker intervened in German politics with the following result:

Müntefering – suffering
Stoiber – liberator
Merkel – Berkeley (a Protestant pragmatist politician is turned into a Catholic idealist philosopher!)
Linkspartei – “disparateness”, “kindergarten”
Lothar Bisky – “loathing risky”

Right now the spellchecker is protesting against this post and arguing that the word “spellchecker” does not exist.

So be it…

By: Gene O'Grady

Gene O'Grady — Sat, 05 May 2007 03:56:07 +0000

And I had an office mate named Nikaido once. I caught MicroSoft in the act before the memo went out saying “Please contact Mrs. Naked…”

By: David

David — Sat, 05 May 2007 03:25:16 +0000

See, now if you had titled this “Don’t Fear the Spellchecker” I could have gotten a “this thread needs more cowbelle” joke in there.

By: Henry (not the famous one)

Henry (not the famous one) — Sat, 05 May 2007 01:15:23 +0000

But let’s also give a tip of the hat to the poetic inventions that a not quite top of the line scanner will produce. In the ten-year-old Washington Monthly article on Fred Thompson that is linked to over at Kevin Drum’s page you will find:

With iris traditional Southern values . . . he could win his tough race with dim Cooper if . . . Thompson doesn’t seem passionate about anything except being Ol’ Erred. . .

There’s more, of course.

Maybe we should send Naked Lunch through the scanner a few times to see what we get.

By: rea

rea — Fri, 04 May 2007 23:51:55 +0000

. . . And a friend of mine named “Yanich,” had his name routinely changed to “Eunuch” . . .

By: BillCinSD

BillCinSD — Fri, 04 May 2007 22:52:42 +0000

I used to have a grad student named Wensel, that Word wanted to change to Weasel