Texting Means Correcting
I did It again…
to autocorrect or not to autoconnect…autocorrect!
(damn you siri!)
As with any new technology, texting has brought with it a whole new set of issues. Probably the best known one is the problems generated automatically by autocorrect. Whole books have been written sharing the humorous mistakes engendered by this fiendish little programming “shortcut.” It sometimes seems as if there is a devilish little gremlin hiding in your phone, just waiting to pounce and create linguistic—and personal—mayhem. Indeed, there are many of us who suspect that there is a back room at Apple Computer where mischievous programmers come up with the most embarrassing possible ways to autocorrect our misspellings.
My sister is a busy real estate agent and is constantly generating texts in a hurry and then hitting send without proofreading the body of the text or the “To” field. She once sent a text to another agent saying how much she hated the agent (she meant to send it to her assistant). Another time she was on her way to show a house and got stuck in traffic. She sent a quick text apologizing to her client for running late, saying she had gotten stuck…or so she thought. Imagine her horror when she checker her phone after sending the text and saw it said sh was late because she “had gotten Fu$%*ed.”
Perhaps we should call it “autoembarrass.” I can see those geeks at Apple, sitting around their computers, high-fiving each other as they get secret reports back from the cookies embedded in our phones: “Yeah! A real estate agent in Buffalo, New York just texted Fu$%*ed!! Ha ha ha!” Strangely enough, my sister was on a safari in Africa a few years later and one of the people on her trip was the Apple executive in charge of Siri. She asked him if, indeed, some of the programmers were having a little too much fun. Officially, he would neither confirm or deny, but unofficially…
Personally, I have gotten to the point where I often don’t write my texts at all. Instead I say “Hey Siri” and when my phone responds with “what can I help you with, I’m listening,” I tell Siri to “Send a text to ________.” Then I dictate the text and when Siri says, “Ready to send it, I say…” NO! STOP! It is at this point when all hell can break loose. This is what happened to my sister. Almost without fail, what you said, and what Siri heard are two different things. Usually, the mistake is minor, but sometimes… (If you can’t do this on your iPhone or iPad, open settings, scroll down and select “Siri & Search,” then find the toggle switch for “Hey Siri” and turn it on. Then make sure dictation is enabled by going to Settings>General>Keyboard and turning on “Enable Dictation.”)
Turning your carefully thought-out text (hah!) into a word salad can just as easily happen when tapping out texts with your fingers in your phone. The “keys” are small, fingers large, brains often distracted. I even find myself making mistakes when tapping out texts on my iPad Pro, where the keyboard is much larger.
Fortunately, you have a number of options to ensure that your texts say what you intended. First, if dictating, make sure you train your phone properly to recognize your voice. If you are having trouble with Siri, you can delete your voice recognition files and start over by going to “Settings > Siri & Search > Siri History” and tapping “Delete Siri & Dictation History.” Turn off “Hey Siri” and turn it on again and follow the prompts from Apple. You can retrain Siri to recognize your voice, this time making sure to speak more slowly and clearly.
A humorous aside: you can change the voice of Siri to just about any English accent you want: male American, female British, male South African, female Irish, etc. A friend of mine is the female Australian voice of Siri, so for grins I thought I’d choose her as my Siri voice. I didn’t realize, however that the language preference is a two-way street, and soon found that there were many instances where Siri and I didn’t hear ear-to-ear, as it were. For example, instead of saying “Call ____ mobile,” I had to say “Call____ mob-eye-le” since Australians pronounce the “i” in mobile very differently from Americans.”
So I put the voice back to American and retrained Siri.
I also turn off autocorrect (General > Keyboard > Autocorrection), since I still like to bang out texts using my fingers. I am a writer, after all. (BTW, I have no idea how to change any of these settings on an Android phone; I’m a Mac guy. If you’re using another operating system, you’ll have to Google how to make these changes.) But I leave on “General > Predictive” so that my phone will show me suggestions as I type, which especially saves time with long words, which I spell wrong half the time anyway.
The one hard and fast rule you should follow to solve all these problems is simple: take the time to read your text before you send it. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. It is a rule you should follow with all your writing, why should texting be any different? Read, proofread, edit and fix any mistakes in spelling, grammar and especially meaning. Make your communication clear. I also edit my dictated texts for length. Often they are way too long for a text. Always remember that “Brevity is the soul of wit.” If brevity was good enough for Shakespeare, it is good enough for you. Clarity too.
I hope you like Moist Ink. We’re happy to provide the information free as a public service. A lot of time, energy, software, hardware and more is needed to bring you Moist Ink on a regular basis. If you find this knowledge valuable, please donate so we can keep bringing you quality content. Every little bit helps. Thank you! — Charles Carlson
