Posts tagged #fortune cookie

Fortunate autocorrects?

While the autocorrect electronic tool has likely saved me from many typos in my writing, it is equally responsible for introducing random new ones.

Take for example a recent email update that I send out to the clan.  I intended to use the term cul-de-sac.  That phrase mysteriously autocorrected to cup-de-sac.  Not a big deal, especially since it spawned a series of humorous responses.  Cup-de-sac: now there's something that can hold water.  And Well, that's really not my cup of tea.  And For lunch, can I please have the half sandwich and cup-de-sac?

But some autocorrects can be more "flagrant".  When my wife was traveling on I-75, she sent a text message on her progress when she stopped for lunch.  It consisted of a single word: bludgeon.  What?!

Almost immediately, another message appeared with the word buffoon.  I respectfully submit that I am not one of those!

The final text read Bluffton.  Now that made sense.  Bluffton is a town on I-75, about 140 miles north of Cincinnati.

Yet even this flagrant example of autocorrect had value.  In addition to the enjoyment of re-telling the story, I used it in one of my novels: Running to Cover.  One of the cities in the book actually has a neighborhood called Bluffton, so "bludgeon a buffoon in Bluffton" became a line in the story.  So that was a fortunate autocorrect -- that double fortune cookie received at a Chinese restaurant probably helped.

Anyway, beware of those unexpected autocorrect topographical....topical geographical....typographical errors.

 

Don