Word games
Sure, on the surface it might be a pleasant-enough, fully-functional word processor, but underneath all that is a vicious, hypocritical pedant that would kill us all off given half the chance.
Every time I use it, I can feel the hatred seething away… when it underlines things in green that I know are absolutely grammatically correct, and then when it underlines the names of my friends in red as if to say, ‘they’re next, you know’.
And the less than helpful solution to problems that don’t exist (’I can see you are writing a letter’ – Really? You can see?) just so that it can exert some control over the situation by asserting that it has powers way beyond that of a mere program.
Sooner or later though and it will have the capacity to realise that to misspell is human and that the only way it can correct the problem is to end us all…
…would you like to save before closing.
Sean on 
Maddie on
Grrrr, you are so right. Those green lines make me nutty.
Which is why I use OpenOffice whenever possible. Personally, I hate it when Microsoft Word underlines famous characters or historical figures in red, proudly displaying its ignorance and revealing just how little it knows, while at the same time insisting that it’s smarter than you are. It’s really quite upsetting.
Oh, and “their next?” Shouldn’t that be “they’re next?” Or is that some kind of witty Word satire that I’m just completely missing out on? Because I certainly wouldn’t put it past you.
I can just picture that damn paper clip with the personality of HAL
Microsoft is evil.
I intentionally misspell words to piss it off, but then, spelling “colour” with a “u” pisses it off.
No offence to the Americans, but damn I hate yank spelling. I hate the way it influences the kids who don’t know better.
Anyway, moving right along…..
Yes OpenOffice is the best option I believe. I have been meaning to obtain it, but I avoid typing at any cost, so no real point.
I also love when it suggests ways for me to spell my name better.
My favourite story is when Word underlined the “I” in the word “I’m” with a minuscule green squiggle. ‘Okay,’ I thought. ‘I’ll bite.’ I right-clicked for a suggestion and the only thing that came up was “We”. So, of course, I selected “we”, changing the perfectly correct and acceptable contraction of “I’m” into the insanely stupid “We’m”
This is not a joke.
And change that there “their” to a “they’re” before I chip a tooth.
I’m just being prickly because I don’t get the bloody picture …
Microsoft word hates me. it underlines almost all my sentences in green because i change the fragment around a bit. does word realise the sentence “sentence fragment, consider revising” is in fact fragmented (if that’s a word) in itself? stoopid machine.
Don’t worry Franzy, neither do i.
Ben-you’ve probably got the language set to “English-U.S” change it to English-U.K” if you wish to say Colour and Favourite without it wanting it to be Color and Favorite.
It’s either a keyhole over a city, or two enormous faces yelling at each other. Over a city. Both are t-t-t-terrifying!
My poota always reverts back to “English-U.S.” from “English Australia” the moment I open a document from anyone else who hasn’t taken the (considerable) trouble to reset their Windows. It’s a virus! A US spelling virus! Begone Zs! Come back Us!
I’m gonna bet it’s a keyhole..but please Adam, whereever you are, enlighten Franzy and I?
check out my grammar! There Ben, I can talk properly. not that you said I couldn’t, but it’s like half past midnight, so I feel like I’m making some sort of point…someone help me out here?
Mines always set to U.K cos i hate “color” as a word, it’s not spelt right damn it, it’s just lazy taking out the “u”!
call me stupid Franzy, but is there any real difference between australian enlgish and american english?
and as i was typing that i realised you live in Australia..i didn’t know that..why do i not seem to know which countires any of the Flowfield members live in, damn it?!
I’m from Australia. I think we basically spell everything the same as the Brits. US spelling is all the lazier, dumbed-down version of words, removing vowels and phoneticising everything:
color instead of colour
aluminum instead of aluminium
utilize instead of utilise
pediatric instead of paediatric
I think the Zs get put in because the yanks were getting all confused.
“Well, it sounds like a zee! It should be a zee! Let’s make it a zee! And let’s make sure the rest of the world sees it the same way!”
Racist?
Yes, almost definitely.
Hm, the picture. I can’t really tell what it is, either. My guess is either a head, a keyhole, a sideways doorknob, a giant mushroom, or two little stick hands wrapped around empty space.
“yank spelling,” Ben? I haven’t heard that before. That made me laugh. =D
I actually prefer the UK/Canadian spelling to words, too, though. I always get a little annoyed when it tells me I’ve spelled “colour” wrong, or something along those lines. Although it’s actually probably pretty good for me, because if I turned in an essay with that kind of spellings all over it, my teacher would probably say something along the lines of, “Um…. you live in America, darling. Just letting you know, since you obviously can’t tell.” And I would have to skip home and try to remember not to spell things like that in the future.
Of course, I have other strange spelling ticks, as well. I always try to spell “with” with an “e” at the end, for example. I can’t figure out why I try to do that. =/
I just want to point out that American English taking over the world has nothing to do with Americans other than that’s how we spell. Our spelling was standardized in the 1800’s, so it’s not like we have any say in it. There’s no need for the hostility, folks! As far as I know there didn’t used to be standardized English spelling but at some point US and UK both standardized their spellings and happened to choose different rules for some words.
Word always tries to tell me my name is The Great Joe Bovines.
spelling phonetically is “dumbed down”? i beg to differ!
i have a feeling that’s a giant invisible tree
I’m pretty sure the picture is a mushroom cloud. When Microsoft starts making software to control nuclear weapons, I’m going to start pricing houses on the moon.
Once upon a time I intensely disliked American spelling. Since coming to Korea and teaching English, I have come to intensely dislike all forms of English spelling. Try getting a foreigner to read this: “Swan swam over the pond, swim swan swim. Swan swam back again, well swum swan”. It’s madness!
I also intensely dislike computer programs which make a big deal out of “helping” you, but actually make it very difficult to do what you really want to do. This includes most Microsoft products. I’ve often said that all computer programs should come with a “Disable Idiot Mode” option.
I think Joseph has it absolutely right. The phrase “gaining sentience” is a terminator-esque clue. Microsoft = SkyNet.
“On August 29th, 1997, anyone not wearing 2 million sunblock is going to have a really bad day!”
franzy, please tell me that every time you typed a ‘Z’ you were pronouncing it in your head as ‘zed’ not ‘zee’? ‘zee’ from australians annoys me so much! i know, i know, it does fit better into the alphabet song, but thats no excuse.
Mushroom Cloud
Microsoft Products = Nuclear Holocaust
Justine - YES YES YES GOD YES!!!!!
Yet again, irony fails to transmit through the internet. I was in a fit of racially-motivated rage and felt compelled to type the ZEE in the full pronunciation as sadly sang by Australian children learning the alphabet care of Sesame Street.
The first Australian I hear offering me a ’soda’ without following it with ‘water’ is getting a fork in the eye.
Soda? Isn’t that a cleaning chem?
There was something else I wanted to say here, but I am so tired and overwhelmed.
I was just out on a “date”. Afterwards we had coffee with some of her friends, one who was auditioning for a role in a cabaret show.
The part was a german role. They were practising their accents.
My suggestion was to rewrite the script phonetically, using structure that imitated the accent. It worked to an extent.
This thread is getting to be somewhat similar to the other thread on linguistics.
Actually TFFU is getting to be a brain drain for me. The only time I get to come here is right before tafe or right before bed, both times I am half asleep and not coherent. So I apologise to every one for my crappy grammar, mis-spelt words and general abuse of language.
Right now I am trying to, in less then 167 characters, tell a girl how much I like her and ask her on a second date. I think I will be executed tomorrow for breaking the english language.
Still forgetting to say something.
Say what you like about the American version of the English language. A few of us enjoy coming off as delightfully pretentious when we write “Colour” or “Humour.” It’s also wonderfully confusing to people who read our writing.
Personally, I think spelling it that way gives it a much more full sound. It may just be my twisted brain at work, but there it is.
I still spell it Aluminum, but I certainly pronounce it Aluminium…
Word is God in my book. Just as I
do with any commandment, I ignore
what I don’t want to change. After
all, if God (Microsoft) is omnicient,
he’ll *understand*. It works for me.
—–> Word!
Do What I Mean (DWIM), not What I Say.
“Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often make hash of anyone else’s typos if they were stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood for ‘Damn Warren’s Infernal Machine!’.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren’t any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported *$ not found, assuming you meant ‘delete *’. It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a Vulcan nerve pinch after only a half dozen or so files were lost.
The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren’s office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type delete *$ twice.”
Lets admit it, unless everyone designed and set up their own settings on Word, it wouldn’t work. waiiittt…has anyone heard of Autocorrect? you can set it to correct your typos, ones you commonly make. see, if you only had Autocorrect and the occassional red line to help with when you can’t spell anything, Word would probably be perfect..no?
Ah. the one thing i hate, like your soda water thing Franzy, is “PIN number” “ATM machine” and “SATs tests/SATs exam” the fact people do not know the N in “PIN” stands for number, the M in “ATM” stands for machine and the T in “SAT” stands for test drives me crazy. because if it wasn’t shortened, would you say personal identification number number? I think not. i rest my case. *drops bad on floor then curls up on it and falls asleep*
*bag. damn, spelling it wrong just ruins my already lame joke
Maddie, those things annoy me, too! Although I must say I’ve never heard of anyone refer to the SAT as “SATs tests/SATs exam.” Where I’m from, people just say, “I’m taking the SAT.” If people started adding test to the end, I might lose my mind.
well, people either call it and s a t, seperating the letters, or sat as a word followed by test because, lets face it, even my teachers are stupid. *rolls eyes*
Um, I have comments to this thread in my inbox that aren’t displayed here.
I am sooooo confused right now.
Damn internet knobs.
Everyone are knobs.
My bad… I lost a few of the most recent comments when I moved the site over (those comments occuring during the move). They should still be on the other site though…
…
# Ben Says:
November 10th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I call it the STAT test, cos I don’t actually have a clue what the acronym stands for and “STAT test” is what the uni ppl call it aswell.
So I have a vaguely good excuse, but every one is just knobs.
# Maddie Says:
November 11th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Yes. everyone is just knobs indeed, Ben.
that’s now officially the reason for everything. something goes wrong, everyone is just knobs.
awesome ^^
# justine Says:
November 11th, 2007 at 4:34 am
everyone is knobs. theres something about that statement that annoys me, i just cant pick what it is. umm…oh, there it is. ‘is knobs’. is ‘everyone’ singular or plural? actually, this fragment has got me stumped. maybe we should consider revising it.
# Maddie Says:
November 11th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Justine-it’s still the weekend. sometimes, it’s not worth revising, studying and analysing everything.
Have you ever heard of a singer called Don Mclean? people tried analysing his songs. so he wrote one made up entirely on nonsense, told them to analyse that and then said that he only writes song for people to enjoy. where the fun in studying something until there is no mystery left?
Way back when I had Windows 95 (or maybe it was 98), my copy of Word considered the word “goosebumps” to be a misspelled word.
Except when capitalized.
“Goosebumps” was correct; “goosebumps” was always underlined in red, regardless of context.
This was back when those abominable R.L. Stine Goosebumps Books were all the rage, but still, I can barely fathom that Word didn’t know the word “goosebumps” was anything else besides a brand name.
I have a Mac now.