By Rebecca Boyle Posted 03.01.2012 at 12:52 pm 18 Comments

Autocorrect

IMHO, people should spell out their words in text messages. Otherwise you get embarrassing mistakes. Then your whole school gets locked down. This just happened in Florida. Srsly.

On Wednesday, a student at West Hall middle or high school in Gainesville, Fla., tried to send a buddy a text with the message “gunna be at west hall today.” The autocorrect feature on this student’s phone changed it to “gunman.”

So the text — which also went to the wrong number — read “gunman be at west hall today.” Someone reported this to school officials and West Hall middle and high schools were locked down. The lockdown ended a couple hours later after school officials figured out what happened, according to the Gainesville Times.

This would be funnier if it didn’t come three days after a deadly school shooting in Ohio. That tragedy, as well as the legacy of Columbine High School in Colorado and of Virginia Tech, appropriately sends school officials on edge anytime someone uses the word “gun.”

Still, you kind of have to laugh. It’s not clear what brand the phone was in this case, but anyone with autocorrect has accidentally sent a text saying, perhaps, that you’re sending the dog to the “broiler” when you mean “groomer” or maybe “renown” instead of “Tebow” or something inappropriate when you meant "pizza" and so on.

But "gunman"?

18 Comments

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Nightshade1765
03/01/12 at 1:53 pm

You go on to say, "... people should spell out their words in text messages." Immediately after saying, "IMHO". Using an abbreviation like that is incredibly unprofessional and not even remotely academic on its own. Let alone when it is proceeded by you saying people should be spelling out words in text.

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Delkomatic
03/01/12 at 2:15 pm

I think we underestime kids

This sounds simply like a kid trying to get out of school or a test to me.

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Delkomatic
03/01/12 at 2:17 pm

@nightshade1765

umadbro?

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danieljaycho
03/01/12 at 2:23 pm

This is Gainesville, Georgia, not Florida

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DickySimms
03/01/12 at 2:35 pm

@nightshade1765

This might help you out:

Joke (jk)
n.
1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal
a. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
b. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.

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Delkomatic
03/01/12 at 2:46 pm

Dicky you might wanna post sarcasm for him as well

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Jdcie
03/01/12 at 3:41 pm

@Nightshade1765

It's called satirical humor. Surely someone of your caliber and 'intellect' would've been able to detect that...

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Robot
03/01/12 at 4:49 pm

Balance budget = A fictional promotional drama, portraid by dancing bears and snorting bulls, as the public watching in amusument, nothing actually is acomplished.

I just made that up and it has nothing to do with the topic, but what the hey, ....

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Robot
03/01/12 at 4:53 pm

Oh yea, now I remember what motivated me, you all were clarifying definitions of things...lol

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psciz
03/02/12 at 2:07 am

This is a logical offshoot of the fact that no one ever proof reads what they type anymore. That includes magazine editors. Everyone just fires off the typing and posts it, never looking to see if their grammar was correct or even if they used the right word. This, coupled with 'predictive' correction, gets you the above event. Swype style keyboards seem to be the most guilty at this sort of thing, completely changing your misspelled word into some other word not even remotely similar in meaning to what you attempted to say.

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wjbean
03/02/12 at 9:41 am

There is really nothing wrong with auto-correct. The real problem is a lack of proof-reading.

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m3talc0re
03/02/12 at 10:54 am

@Nightshade1765
Or the simple fact that he's not even talking about using abbreviations. He's talking about spelling the words out rather than relying on spell check. I'm glad to see your reading comprehension has gone down the shitter...

@wjbean
I agree. I proof-read every txt I write, since I use T9.

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m3talc0re
03/02/12 at 10:57 am

Ah hell, it's early and I just woke up...
spell check should be auto-correct and a she wrote the article, not a he XD Maybe I should've proof-read my reply better -_-

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drchuck1
03/02/12 at 2:18 pm

evil robot go away or stop trolling, negative cheers

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lewisjayc
03/02/12 at 10:20 pm

Could've been worse. For instance, if he used voice recognition to write the text, it easily could have typed, "Gotta be cat bestial I'm gay"

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Robot
03/02/12 at 10:29 pm

Chuck, let me browse all the beneficial productive comments you left in regards to this article.
Yup, 'none', just you’re usual whining....

I realize I am speaking to a dead head since you a hopeless narcissistic.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.

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nighthawkich
03/03/12 at 6:57 pm

"Me fail english? That's Unpossible!" -Ralph Wiggum



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