My messy copy is not the fault of my errant fingers, although I must admit that in my prime I could type 80 mistakes a minute, in the days when that meant something, before two-fingered reporters took over the city room (and whatever happened to Pittman's?) I actually took touch typing at a business college, at my father's insistence, the summer before I entered university. I wrote all my essays on a typewriter and thus learned at an early stage of my career to think with my fingers. I still use all my fingers on my desktop and my laptop but the keyboard of my iPadmini is too small so I just poke at it. It makes a lot of mistakes.
I'm not the only one. Last year I went on a cruise with a distant friend - distant geographically, that is, not distant in warmth or rapport. We planned our trip by email and since we are both efficient people, she more than I, we managed quite well. But early on, when we were planning our drinks package, June wrote something, I guess asking how much it would cost per derek. Derek? Aujto-correct had taken over. Whatever she wrote, she meant drink and our know-it-all computers translated. Which one? Hers I guess, but mine is just as arrogant. Anyway, to its surprise, should anyone tell it, derek was a good word. Throughout that trip and a subsequent one a year later, we would go to the bar for a derek: G&T for June, Dirty Martini for me.
In my recent purge of clippings, I came across an item from the NYT magazine, dated June 8, 2014, about Auto-Correct. The article presented a short history of typo checking, from early days when it corrected the writer from a pre-programmed list of common mistakes, substituting what you meant to write. So: "teh" for "the";" friday" for "Friday" - you know your slips better than I do. I still write "hve" for "have". Most of the time I have to correct it. Just now however, it corrected it when I wanted to show you my usual error - So I had to go back and delete the a. Very annoying. But now, the service goes too far. It puts words in my mouth, that is, on my screen. Nowadays I am asontinshed when it gets anything right. Now, see there, I messed up that word, but I bet you know what I meant. Auto-Correct didn't know. It expects me to go back and correct it myself.
Where will it all edn?