Many of us bemoan the fact that society seems to have at times simply given up on the English language.
The prevalence of spelling and grammatical errors in all print media is appalling. And then what do we do? We repeat it.
After all our protestations, something similar creeps into our own work. Be it blog or book or other article, suddenly we are stung.
So what do we do about it? do we cry and throw a tantrum? NO! We fix it, as quickly and as quietly as we can, with copious thanks to the gentle souls who brought it to our attention.
Now you are reading this and thinking to yourself “where the hell do tablets come into this?”
No, it has nothing to do with taking a chill pill, though I appreciate the almost humorous (but not quite) double meaning.
I am referring to tablet PC’s, be they android, ipad, windows based (yes they exist, and are cool as I can play my normal games on them) or some other variant. Everybody uses them in some form, whether it is their baby cousins the smart phone, or full blown tablet addiction. And everybody that uses them is familiar with the notorious misdeeds of the autospell function. It helps enormously when my fat fingers are unable to correctly hit those tiny touch screen buttons, but when it guesses the word wrong it can be funny, or it can just make you look plain stupid.
This is where the broad shoulders come in. You will notice a few blog posts back I commented it was my first post from my tablet. That was an interesting experience I tell you. I spent a very long time on that post, going through it looking for those comedic wrong guesses on the part of the machine. I recently received a very kind note from a reader about a subsequent such occurrence, and it got me thinking. The tone of those kinds of messages is very gentle these days. I think that is wonderful, and perhaps it is the awareness of the imperfections of technology that has driven it, but I believe it has had another effect as well.
With our awareness of our autospell problems, we react better when a typo is pointed out. With a shrug, and a quiet apology or thanks, or both, we correct the painful pride dent, and continue along with a promise in our hearts to check one extra time on our next post. In essence, yes, we are getting broader shoulders about this kind of thing being pointed out to us, and as a result, reacting kindly when they are, resulting in kinder approaches the next time.
So that begs the question: Is the devil known as autospell actually making us into better people?
Something for you to think about as you head into this glorious weekend. Where I am, the sun is out, the birds are tweeting, and spring is in full measure on the lawn. That includes the dog poop – I must dispose of that. I hope for you, the weekend brings pleasure even for those stuck in a cold part of their year. And next time you see a funny autospell error, have a chuckle. There are loads of them all over the Internet. By the way I left at least one in this post, I am fairly certain of that. Comment if you find it!
Cheers,
Martin.