Autocorrect

Cartoon a Day

My spelling has gone from shocking to atrocious. I realised this when I spelt champagne like champaign. It was partly autocorrects fault but it took a second look before I realised something in the name of bubbly was horribly wrong. I’m not even half way through this blog post and I’m already debating the use of ‘spelled’ and ‘spelt’.

I used to be really good at this spelling thing- above average even but now where’s and were’s get lost in autocorrect. I drop important words in my speech. I speak in direct translations from my vernacular and I add Twitter hashtags like “death by” “smh” and “that awkward moment when”. I'm not sure I really know what awkward means anymore. I run out of vocabulary and say things like “well that’s a higaldy- pigaldy” instead of “I see you’ve gotten yourself into a spot of bother”. I use ellipses without discretion...

Years of studying the English language and literature, poetry collections by Keats, Mills and Wordsworth and it all lies in the cold hands of autocorrect as well as red and green zig- zags. Could it be the end of my writing career? What will future generations say about our grammar?

There is a website dedicated to these language faux pas called Damn You Autocorrect. We need an adult spelling bee. Stat!