Auto-correct (03/26/16)

Do you ever find words that are an example of themselves? An example would be the word "example". The word "noun" is a noun. And, as I started today, I realized that a word that needed auto-correct is the word "autocorrect". Apparently it isn't proper grammar according to the auto-correct on Blogger to use it as one giant compound word.

Auto-correct hates me. I'm sure of it. Well, auto-correct, I hate you too.

We all have the little things that make us feel OCD. For me, there are only two main things that I have to have perfect. The first is that when I eat pizza with pepperonis, each pepperoni has to fit entirely into my mouth because I don't want to have to bite through the extra layer of food to get to the end result. The second is those little red squiggly lines that appear underneath words that I know are spelled correctly. I realize that my last name is spelled phonetically. You don't have to tell me.

On my phone, I like to use the swiping option on my keyboard so I can hit all the letters I need without lifting my finger. It usually knows exactly what you were trying to type, but occasionally it turns words like "me" into words like "knife" or "new". (Both of which have happened to me.) I don't want my friend to bring knife a cookie, I want her to bring me a cookie.

Also, I've found that the auto-correct on Google Drive is great about recognizing really obscure words. It isn't great at knowing that you're using a different form of that word. I remember doing a research report on New Zealand and finding that it knew the name of a bird that I only knew because of the report, yet when I tried to make it plural, it decided that I had spelled it wrong. There was no fault in how I pluralized it, only in how it recognized it.

The worst is when I'm editing something. I decide to add a sentence or a word into the middle of a preexisting paragraph, and each time I stop, it notifies me that the word I just finished writing needs a space before the first word of the next sentence. I know that I can't leave it as it currently is, but because it isn't human, it doesn't have the ability to understand what I am doing and not remind me.

I guess that's the main reason why I auto-correct and I have such a love-hate relationship. (I do love it occasionally because it really is helpful against the words I strongly dislike because of their crazy spellings.) Auto-correct isn't human. It can't feel, think, or read your emotions. It's just doing its job. There will always be a difference in empathy between the living and the machines, and humans can just connect so much more in person instead of through computers, phones, or other technology.