Mainstream Media Now Hip to Auto-Correct Blunders

News flash: auto-correct kinda stinks.

The handy feature which inserts hilarious, embarassing, awkward and sometimes just plain old bewildering mistakes into the text messages and emails sent on your mobile not-so-smartphone is attracting attention from the San Jose Mercury News, which reported today that "texting blunders" often result when a user pokes away at a touch screen.

This, of course, is no news at all to the Interwebs, for which autocorrecting mishaps have long been Web gold. Consider, for example, the glut of Web sites dedicated to auto-correct screwups: there's DamnYouAutocorrect.com and AutocorrectFail.org, the newspaper reports. The former now receives up to 600 submissions of twisted texts a day, according to the Merc.

Exactly why the auto-correct can be so horribly bad -- "fried children" for "fried chicken," "on the rathole" instead of "on the way home," are two examples used by the newspaper -- isn't something the phone companies are willing to discuss. What is certain is this: screwups are much more likely to be committed on an iPhone's touch screen than a typewriter.

Copyright FREEL - NBC Local Media
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