Audacious Auto Correct

I am vividly aware that more and more people in this country are becoming lazy.  How am I coming to this conclusion?  From the simple fact the like the old Staples commercials, we are constantly looking for an "easy" button.

Case in point, when I was in high school back in 1999 (old, I know), our computers did not have the luxury of the auto correct option.  If you made a mistake when typing, you needed to proof read the material yourself and then make the necessary changes.  Granted, I believe that I was lucky enough to have spell check, but that was it.  You were held responsible for knowing what you were trying to say and for properly typing these thoughts onto the computer.

Flash forward to 2013 and you have the invention of the auto correct feature.  While this can be helpful at times, I find it to be more of a hindrance.  The program does not recognize many proper names, so it tries to fill the name in with a similar name.  Not good!  Furthermore, it makes the writer even more cautious about hitting the "send" button because the entire message can come out as gibberish.

Take this portion of an e-mail that my mom sent me from her smart phone:

"Just leaving Target.  I wad bad again.  I made some poor woman on her cellphone uncomfortable.  She wad talking with someone about what they did last high, wink, wink and I needed something intent aisle!"

Yikes!!  I soon called my mom to see if she was okay as this message was almost undecipherable.   The message should have read:

"Just leaving Target.  I WAS bad again.  I made some poor woman on her cellphone uncomfortable.  She WAS talking with someone about what they did last NIGHT, wink, wink and I needed something IN THAT aisle!"

My mom soon vented her frustrations with auto correct.  She stated that she had to spend most of her time entering words into the program's dictionary so that it would not keep changing words on her.  So, for all you texting fiends, you may want to think twice about sending messages versus just picking up the phone and calling your friend.  Your message may be better received and understood.