Gaffes galore

Austin Barry

Educashon, Educashon, Educashon.

RW

Peter, did you mean "Even the spellchecker's rebelling" or "Even spellcheckers are rebelling"?

Apostrophes, Apostrophes, Apostrophes.

Pete Hoskin

RW: no I meant what I wrote - as in, "even spell-checker is rebelling". Might be wrong in treating spell-checker as a quasi-brand though (as in - "even MS Word is rebelling").

Hm. I guess it doesn't really matter, but would any computer enthusiast-types be able to enlighten us?

David Short

Well, the Spectator should not be throwing stones. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen it's where 'its' should be, and the same with principles/principals.

And we haven't forgotten the time you published the same story twice, puffing a TV series, while omitting Michael Gove's piece on the Kenyan riots as a result!

I heard it's because you fired sub-editors and spent the money on 'blogs' instead!

pseudoKu

Pete,

Spell-checker is not a brand as far as I know. It is a tool/feature that ships with most word processors and these days with browsers too. So yes, using it as a quasi-brand would be wrong. And RW would be right!

Lance Diatessaron

I'm no computer enthusiast but I think Peter's use of 'spell-checker' as a term for a generic software tool is perfectly reasonable.

I believe he was making the point that even an automated software package appeared to be developing artificial intelligence in order to rebel against the government, and the people employed to populate the website. Writing 'the spellchecker' or 'spellcheckers' would imply that the people employed to correct spelling were rebelling, which would be less remarkable.

Pete Hoskin

What Lance Diatessaron said!