The mysteries of paintballing

[Jonathan Lighter]

Good, Joel.  One of these days a government spellchecker will OK a "now" in place of a "not" and we'll all go sky-high.

  Just another postmodern concern.

  JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: The mysteries of paintballing
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On 10/2/06, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> OK, Ben -- but remember, I also speculated about a spellchecker effect!

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you hadn't. I've added a clarifying
parenthetical.

--Ben Zimmer


> At 10/2/2006 01:55 PM, you wrote:
> >Now appearing on Language Log...
> >
> >http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003629.html
> >
> >Comments welcome.
> >
> >On 10/1/06, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>
> >>At 9/30/2006 08:52 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >> >Yes, this looks like a spellchecker artifact. Most likely the
> >> >misspelling was "dentified" -- MS Word suggests "identified",
> >> >"dandified", and "denitrified". Another word processing program might
> >> >rank "denitrified" first.
> >> >
> >> >By the way, this has been dubbed "the Cupertino effect" by European
> >> >Union translators:
> >> >
> >> >http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002911.html
> >>
> >>Amusing; thanks, Ben. So, remembering the earlier "orthodentist"
> >>discussion, I tried Word on "orthodentist" and
> >>"orthodentify|fied". Quel disappointment.
> >

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