Autocorrect

In this age of hustle bustle, packed Outlook schedules, fast-talkers, and even faster walkers, it's nice to have technology clean up after us. 

However.

Autocorrect is a handy tool, sure, particularly if you’re illiterate or have sausages for fingers. But as a persnickety gal in a hurry, I don't fancy my phone's inner editor redlining and overruling my words in the most supercilious manner, even when I spell them correctly. When I text about my cat Frida, she becomes Friday. Higgs boson defaulted to Hugs Bosom,which would be an AWESOME porn or drag name but not quite what I was going for when trying to rock a particle physics confab. I wished a dashing young man luck on a potential job and his reply? "From your lipids to God's ears."

Not exactly what he was going for, methinks, although my triglycerides are pretty fucking awesome.

While trying to be helpful, this presumptuous hit, I mean, git is putting words in my mouth, or at least on my screen. If I wanted to be second-guessed and condescended to, I'd ring up my ex-boyfriend. He was a champion speller of jackassian proportions and he had a Prius, I mean, penis.


(photo: damnyouautocorrect.com)

Malapropisms and mispronunciations

I’ve been a stickler for language since I was in 7^th grade, which means I’ve one persnickety fuck for decades. I try to tamp down my know-it-all-ness when a friend or relative mangles the mother tongue (luckily I surround myself with really smart people) but nevertheless, I internally cringe when someone busts out a malaprop or mispronounces a word.

There are words and phrase that have been around since the dawn of the OED, or at least since we’ve been alive. It’s harder to forgive the repeated slip of the tongue. That makes me think you just don’t give a rat’s ass.

In junior high, I did a paper on anorexia. I love my mother but to this day, she refers to it as “anorexis nervosis.” I can’t fix this, or her repeated use of “reinerate” (vs. reiterate) and “bookoo bucks." I still haven’t figured out what the eff she means when she breaks out “coup ferré.”

To me, the most oft-misused and ear-bleeding offense is “irregardless.” When I worked at a publishing company, the editors would roll our internal eyes every time the owner threw that out in a meeting. Let me reiterate: I worked at a PUBLISHING company. Dude should have known better. Better yet, dude should have been punched in the face.

And if I hear someone bust out "nuculur," I'm going to mushroom cloud all over them, regardless of whether they were once president.

What language offense most gripes your ass?

(photo: comiccoverage.typepad.com)

Intentionally misspelled titles

I was just reading the latest issue of Allure (I’m its Seattle reporter) and read a quote from cover girl Fergie. When asked why she named her album The Dutchess and not the proper “duchess,” she had this to say (hint: she's not from the Netherlands): “The spelling is different because I didn’t want people who didn’t know how to say it to call it ‘the Douche-ess.’”

It gets better.

“I thought, ‘Let me dumb-ify it a little bit.’ Sometimes you smarten things up and get more clever with words. It’s fun to go the other way, and it’s always nice for people not to expect as much from me.”

Um, sweetcheeks, sorry to break it to you, but after “My Humps,” I wasn’t exactly expecting you to play chess with Bill Gates. But I did hope that you'd proofread the title of your CD.

Is it street to be stupid? Is it in vogue to be a low-forehead asshat? Call me nutbar, but why not use your celebrity to educate and elevate your audience? Why ya gotta be an inglourious basterd?

This sort of widespread dumbing-down interferes with my pursuit of happyness. And it certainly chaps my lovely lady lumps. I guess the only way to deal with these spellwreckers is to grab an OED and knock some sense—or at least an ability to spell the title of their album or film correctly—into them.

(photo: hi.baidu.com/twilight_zone/blog/item/94b3d1667f7d9a20ab184cda.html)