Apostrophobia

Mind that apostrophe.
Post Reply
swill453
Lemon Half
Posts: 7479
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 6:11 pm

Apostrophobia

Post by swill453 »

Yes it's a genuine word (in the Urban Dictionary anyway).

I find it a bit infuriating that the Google keyboard on my Android phone, when I type "thoughts", prompts me that perhaps I would really like to use "thought's". The proportion of occasions where that would be a correct replacement must be infinitesimally small. No wonder there's a proliferation of misplaced apostrophes these days.

Now I realise there are many reasons why Google might prompt this, one of which would be because I've used the apostrophe that way in the past, but this isn't the case.

Surely there should be a bit more oversight on this?

Scott.

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 7157
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm

Re: Apostrophobia

Post by bungeejumper »

Mine offers me Ive and Weve, which is really annoying. :evil: I do, however, confess to keying in Isnt now and then, in the expectation that Google will offer me the correct spelling so that I can select it. It's so much less hassle than scrolling through to the extended character menu just so that I can find an apostrophe.

I can only conclude that, for a mistype to make it onto my vocabulary list, I don't need to have confirmed it (eg by pressing a space after the bad word) - just the mere act of typing in those four letters means that the illiterate spelling is now a permanent fixture on my phone. Even if I immediately backspace to cancel it.

When I rule the world, all the major punctuation marks will be on the top keyboard menu, along with abcdef.

BJ

Post Reply

Return to “Pedants' Place”