Because I have poor
vision and can’t type and often send text messages while staggering through
dark alleys, my friends and family often get messages from me that make no
sense. The autocorrect function either leaves obvious mistakes in
place—“clowns” is not spelled “closns”—or it cavalierly substitutes what it
thinks I should be texting without consulting me. As in: “I just finished
reading ‘Anna Karen in a.’ It’s very avant garden.”
Think how different history might have been if famous
people had depended on autocorrect when texting. If Julius Caesar in the heat
of battle had typed “veni, vidi, vici” into his
iPhone, the Roman Senate would have had no idea what he was trying to say when
the message arrived. “What does ‘Gino Video Vicious’ mean, Flavius
Maximus?” a baffled Roman politician might have asked his press secretary.“You
got me,” the flummoxed factotum would reply. “His assistant just texted me,
‘Gino Visit Vick.’ Maybe it’s some kind of code.”
As is widely known,
the various versions of autocorrect arbitrarily alter text, believing that they
can intuit what the sender of the message wishes to say. But if you are typing
in dim light or without your reading glasses or while driving or under extreme
duress, or in a hammered condition, the results can be absurd.
“Foreskinned and
seven years ago…” would have certainly gotten the Gettysburg Address off to a
bizarre start when Abraham Lincoln mouthed these words back in 1863. Honest Abe
would have been met with equally puzzled stares had he remarked: “You can fuel
all of the people some of the time.”
“I only regret that
I have but one wife to lose for my country” almost certainly would not have had
the effect Nathan Hale was looking for before being hanged.
Winston Churchill’s
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweaters” would have been
confusing to harried Britons living through the Blitz in 1940. As would the old
saying, “If you’re going through Hull, keep going.”
“A date which will
live in infancy…” would have puzzled Americans the day after Dec. 7, 1941. Same
thing for “The only thing we have to fear is fur itself.” Or, as the
autocorrected Yogi Berra might have put it: “It ain’t oval till it’s oval.”
Had autocorrect
existed even a few decades ago, it might have had a tremendous effect on many
touchstone expressions from popular culture. “Lunch means never having to say
you’re sorry,” would be the phrase most remembered from “Love Story.” And let
us not forget Humphrey Beaugard’s immortal line, “We’ll always halve Paris,”
from the autocorrected film “Cass’s Blanket.”
Autocorrect would
have had a wonderful time reconfiguring song titles (“Newark State of Mind,”
“Bully Jean”) and song lyrics (“My gift is my song, and this one’s for Hugh.”)
And the most beloved Broadway offerings would now include “The Kink and I” and
“Goys and Dills,” alongside more serious fare like “The Nice Man Cometh” and
“12 Hungry Men.”
If artists were not
paying close attention, autocorrect would have massacred the titles of their
paintings (“Whistling Mothers,” “The Moaning Lisa”). And the function would
have dramatically altered the titles of many famous books: “War and Pizza,”
“Tender Is the Nightie.”
As for the immortal
bard, author of “Whatcha Do About Nothing” and “Omelet,” he might have let
autocorrect rename one of his least successful plays, “Trolls and Cressida,” witch
is weight butter.
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