Trouble with Auto Correction

All word processing applications offer the feature of auto correction. This feature is built into the keyboard applications on computers and mobiles these days. This feature is convenient and becomes lazy. As if auto correction was not sufficient, these software have long since bundled prediction and also learning by experience bundled with them. Although I find it annoying most of the time, there are occasions when I am glad to type less.

All these features are made me lazy and also eroded my knowledge. Instead of typing a long word, I choose to pick it from the list. While I save time here, I have become lazy. Most of the time, I do not convert this saving into anything productive. Moreover, it is a minuscule saving. On the other hand, I am not sure about the spelling anymore. For instance, I have forgotten if it is the "e" or "i" which comes first in weird. Now, I type blindly and wait for the auto-correction feature to kick in. I assure you this is the tip of the iceberg in order to keep it short.

While auto correction can point out your mistake by underlining the wrong word with a red line, the feature can never tell if the sentence written by you is wrong. Absence of this knowledge leads to embarrassing situations. A friend of mine has sent out an introduction email for a colleague. The name of the colleague was Alan. While typing the name, my friend interchanged the letters l and n! To quote another incident, I was in a training session recently where the topic was estimation. The instructor was teaching us various estimation techniques with gut feel being one of them. The handouts contained a typo. As a result, gut feel was printed out "but feel". Now you may imagine our surprise at this estimation technique.

Tags: Musings, Correction