proof-reading fun

[Page Stephens]

Some times computer programs give interesting results.

A few years ago The New Scientist reported that a voice recognition program
interpreted the word diarrhea as dire rear.

Makes sense to me.

Page Stephens

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: proof-reading fun


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: proof-reading fun
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:53 PM -0800 3/30/05, David Colburn wrote:
>>  >
>>>  >"If you can drop me an e-mail that am to let me know when you'll be on
>>>  >campus, I'll try to be in my office."
>>>
>>>
>>>  I think this represents one of the problems of progress. I have
>>> actually had
>>>  things like that make it into print.
>>>
>>>  It is so easy to make small changes in a ms.  I have sent copy off to
>>>  editors, and taking one last look, make a small change in a word of
>>> phrase
>>>  without noticing its effect on other parts of the sentence. In the
>>> olden
>>>  days, when to change one word you needed to retype the entire page,
>>> such
>>>  glitches didn't happen. Other ones did.
>>
>>I don't see the proof-reading problem in the quoted sentence, but I'll
>>take another look at it tomorrow am, and maybe I'll notice something
>>that I'm missing this pm.
>
> I'm assuming it's the garden path initiated by taking "that *am*
> to..." to involve a copula rather than the same sans-dot initialism
> you use in your message.  I could be wrong, but I think this involves
> the isograph between those who insist on "a.m."/"p.m." and those who
> count on context to disambiguate "am".
>
> L