“Die In A Minute”: 125 Times Autocorrect Made A Mess From A Normal Text

Similarly, one Twitter (now X) user from Luxembourg, having just created an account, tweeted (an apt use for the verb) “Finally! A pair of great tits (Parus major) has moved into my birdhouse!” and had their account banned almost instantly. Interestingly, upon review, Twitter support declined to unban the account. 

However, our text messages tend to not fall under such scrutiny, so spellcheck still insists on ducks ducking all over the place, even when not a single bird is present. As always with fails (spellcheck insists on “failure” but we all know it’s something else,) it really depends on where you are sitting. When it happens to you, it’s a tragedy, but hysterical when it happens to someone else. 

More commonly, it’s not so much that we misspell words, but that we over-rely on predictive text. Often it’s great, allowing us to fill in simple emails in moments, to keep some momentum going when writing certain sentences. But if you get used to it, predictive text becomes a crutch, with the writer simply missing the mistakes or misplaced words it gives and leaving it in the text. 

Unfortunately, there is at least one instance where an autocorrect mistake ended up causing someone’s death when it changed “nutter” to “mutter” for one Lancashire man. While it’s unclear why this word would be so triggering, it instigated an argument that caused the recipient to attack the sender, leading to the former being stabbed in the heart.