Places where I used to write the date:
- On cheques
- At the top of letters
- Lesson / lecture notes
- Lab books
- Travel journals
Places where I now write type the date:
- Computer file names
Percentage of times I try to type “date” and it comes out “data”:
- ~92
The last one isn’t an autocorrect, is it?
I could write a lengthy rant on autocorrect and neuroanatomy lecture notes. Top three on my list at the moment are:
nucleus ambiguus (autocorrected to) nucleus ambiguous
nucleus solitarius —> nucleus solitaries
innervated or innervation —> innervations
Gaaahhh!
I feel your pain. I’ve been typing up some notes on an ovarian cancer meeting, and autocrrect changes serous to serious and mucinous to mutinous. Ovarian cancer is serious and mutinous, but that wasn’t quite what I was going for. It also changed secretory cells to secretary cells, but date->data is just my fingers going for the more commonly used (by me) word!
oh look, I mistyped autocorrect. Oopsie.
First thing I do when obtaining either a new computer, or a new install of Word/Excel/etc.:
Turn OFF autocorrect. All of it. Spelling, correction of TWo caps, auto-capitalization in table cells, etc. etc. etc. I’m willing to accept the occasional typo instead of the more-than-occasional stupid word out of context.
But I’m a Luddite curmudgeon, it’s well
documentarydocumented.But, but, think of all the times I’d have to manually correct all the tehs and the like!
(I’m a sloppy typist, especially when I get excited by something I’m writing. My brain works much faster than my fingers and I start typing the next word before I’ve finished the last one, that kind of thing).
You do know that you can add all your fancy pants words into the autocorrect/spell check dictionary, right?
But that would require non-Luddite skills that I don’t wish to acknowledge … I’d rather shake my fist and shout Get off my lawn, autocorrect!! 😉
yeah – I do it one word at a time, because I don’t want to switch it off completely and manually correct my many typos, but it’s a new computer, so it’s still encountering new words!
I always end up with daat when trying to type data.
and auto correct of the email program here at Uni wants to change lin in lindane (I wiki-found that that is: “also known as gamma-hexachlorocyclohexan”). Right, just the thing I want to put in an email in stead of my name…
heh! Autocorrect always changes Cath, too, so I get lots of emails addressed to Chat, Cat, or Catch.
You should try my patented Stevie Wonder autocorrect, much more fun:
innervated or innervation —> Innervisions
suspension —> Superstition
nervous system —> Uptight (everything’s alright)
Oh, the possibilities!
My husband wants to get a GPS. Not because he really feels he needs one, but because he just found out that you can get one that uses Snoop Dogg’s voice.
p.s. I forgot another autocorrect gem: I was trying to write about co-occurring copy number aberrations, i.e. CNA-CNA associations. This became CAN-CAN associations, which sounds more fun, but less likely to get into a respectable journal.
Mr. E Man’s GPS idea sounds fun – except I have a pathological hatred for all electronic things that talk at me. But I could get behind a Snoop Dogg GPS, because I’m street like that, yo.
Thinks – how did you type “Dogg” without it autocorrecting to “Dog”, or “West Coast Suckah”, or something?
Since I got engaged, I only date my fiancee. Do anything else and I figure I’d be in for a world of hurt. Oh wait, wrong date …
wait, what? You only stopped dating other women when you got engaged?!
😉
I’ve come to the realisation that I hate writing dates without actually spelling out a month in there…. why? Since I’ve adapted to writing dates the American way (at work) but keep the Swedish way at home (moronic I know but I can’t change 30 years of writing bday dates in just a few years). Every now and then I end up looking at notes and wonder, is this the 3rd of June or 6th of March*… very confusing. And this when I look at my own computer files too… gah!
I guess it could be helped that I try to write American with – and Swedish with / i.e. 3-6-11 and 6/3 -11 but you know… it’s so much easier to save files with 3June2011 🙂 What’s the Canadian way btw? does it differ from the British way?
I know exactly what you mean – some Canadians use the US format, others use the international format, and others flip-flop between the two! We have US and Japanese collaborators, to further confuse things, so I always make sure that I either type the month or use the YYYY-MM-DD format that (I think) everyone recognises. I prefer the latter because I start a lot of file names (e.g. meeting minutes) with the date, and YYYY-MM-DD will always put the files in the right order whereas the written-out months will be sorted alphabetically, not chronologically.
IMO the US way is illogical and wrong, because MM-DD-YYYY goes medium length unit-shortest unit-longest unit. It makes way more sense to go DD-MM-YYYY (shortest-medium-longest), or YYYY-MM-DD (longest-medium-shortest).
Cath, chall – I’ve actually declared surrender on the (calendar-style) date thing, and always use a three-letter abbreviation for the month (Jan, Feb, etc.) – even in file names.
I seem to recall learning that the SI standard is dd fullmonthname yyyy, so 14 February 2011. Which looks silly. For long-form, I normally write February 14, 2011, which seems a little easier to read and more “literary” somehow.
/topic
If you were telling someone the date verbally, would you say “February 14th”? I think most Brits would say “the 14th of February”, echoing the order in which we would write the date. I use the North American “Febraury 14th” now, for ease of understanding, but I revert to my original way when I visit the UK!
Do you still write checks ?
I think I’ve written one or two in the last three years or so… the last time I remember writing a cheque was for my tattoo artist, because she didn’t take credit cards. (She didn’t have email, either, so we had to fax designs back and forth. I only have access to one fax machine, and it’s a shared one in the office at work. This is part of the reason why I hate fax machines)
OMFSM, I really am a Luddite. I write about a dozen checks each month. Just wrote one for the horse vet yesterday.
No Kristi… you just live where we use checks on at least a monthly basis (rent for example*) 🙂 I’d never written a check when I moved to the US. I gotten some when I was a child from my grandmom but apart from that… never had a check book attached to my bank account in Sweden ^^
*easiest way of paying rent since cash is frowned upon, and electronic transfer isn’t an option….
I do the 14 Feb 2011 (why you had to chose _that_ date, I dunno 😉 ) but it’s good to know I’m not alone…. when I completly surrender to the \letters inside a date\
this should’ve been under Ricardipus but since I couldn’t write the captcha phrase two timws in a row I guess it ended up down here…..
I’ve had that problem with the dreaded CAPTCHA too – going back loses your place in the “reply to ” hierarchy. When I’ve screwed up the captcha a couple of times I tend to copy the comment text (i.e. instead of hitting “Post Comment”), delete it in the comment box and then comment and paste in the right place (when I remember!).