When Words Say More Than You Mean

I was reading some advice the other day about how bloggers should write their posts in a word processor before uploading material, because most blogs don't have spell checks on them.

I am fairly sure mine doesn't, and if it does than I don't use it!

This does mean that there are invariably typos all over this site. Not intentional ones, it actually frustrates me to spot a typo on my blog - especially if it's sat there glaring back at me for weeks without me noticing it. Then you have to make a decision about whether to ignore it or correct it and have a 3 week old post popping up in people's RSS feed readers (whatever that means!).

But I am always amused by typos from people who have used Word, but still fallen short of language perfection. So reliant are they on the red and green wavy lines under their mistakes, sometimes they miss the most obvious errors - those where the word they use is spelt correctly but is just the wrong word entirely.

Sadly Word, as yet, does not have a context monitor which puts a squiggly line under things that make no sense. This is fortunate for me, as if I wrote my blog in Word (which I don't) most of it would be underlined by the computer as making little contextual sense.

Recognise.

I presume most correctly spelt words used in the wrong context have been auto corrected by the computer when someone mis-types - basically guessing what it thought you meant to say. However this is very dangerous - especially when there is no obvious marker to show the writer a change has been made on their behalf.

This situation makes me think back to an incident 3 or 4 years ago at an AGM I was attending for a fairly well known religious organisation. It had been quite a stuffy affair and I have to admit my mind had begun to wander slightly, right up until the point the Chief Exec's report was handed out to those present.

For therein lay a fantastic line of adivce to those in the audience:

"We need to all concentrate on tits importance".

A fair piece of advice, possibly, but not one I had expected from the head officer of a religious organisation. I think what he meant to say was: "We need to concentrate on its importance" and he got auto-corrected.

At least I hope that's what happened!

Perhaps he just had something else on his mind when he was writing his report? And perhaps he should have a conversation with this guy from Redwood Leisure Centre.
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(PS It is completely coincidental that my post about Lembit and his Cheeky Girl has now been followed by a picture of a couple of tits - please do not read too much into this! ;-))
(Photo Source: Jeremy Keith, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cheryl%27s_breasts.jpg)