“Extra Coffin Olive Oil”: 50 Times Autocorrect Had A Mind Of Its Own (New Pics)

Names are particularly treacherous territory. Try texting someone named "Sanjay" and watch autocorrect insist you meant "Sunday" approximately forty-seven times before it finally accepts that yes, you do know someone with that name.

Regional variations and multiple languages throw additional wrenches into the system. British English and American English have different spellings, and if you switch between languages, autocorrect can have what can only be described as a complete identity crisis. Some phones now support multiple language keyboards simultaneously, which works until you're trying to type in Spanish and your phone decides mid-sentence that you've switched to English and starts "correcting" perfectly good Spanish words into English nonsense.

Perhaps most frustratingly, autocorrect often fails at the exact moment you need it most, like when you're typing quickly because you're running late. The faster you type, the more autocorrect assumes you're making mistakes, which creates a vicious cycle of corrections and over-corrections that can turn a simple "sounds good" into "sounds food" and then into something about giraffes because at that point your phone has given up entirely.

Despite its flaws, autocorrect does catch countless genuine typos every day. We just never notice those successes because our attention goes straight to the spectacular failures, like when it changes "I'm on my way" to "I'm on my wat" to "I'm on my cat" and you don't notice until after you hit send.