STOOOOOOOOP!!!! You need a comma their.

Whether it’s for emails, blog posts, or class assignments, I find myself typing on a computer a lot. I don’t consider myself a writer or someone with excellent prose, but I do think I can sometimes adequately capture my thoughts and convey them to a reader. While attempting this exercise, time and time again, I find myself struggling to finish a thought while typing. Not because I have writer's block or one of my phones is distracting me, but because of that darn autopcorrect.

Autocorrect

It’s 2024 and you’re reading a tech blog, so I imagine you are familiar with autocorrect. Inside your favorite word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs or really anywhere else you enter text into a computer, there are these little lines that appear to let you know there’s a mistake or suggestion for clarity. Making the world a better place, one typo at a time. In addition to the one built into your machine, there are more advanced autocorrect systems like Grammarly that you can download if whatever textbox you’re writing in doesn’t have one. I use both the default autocorrect and Grammarly.

It's Rude to Interrupt

The biggest problem I have with autocorrect is it alerts me mid-thought or even mid-sentence of some grammatical error. It’s difficult for me to continue writing when I see the sentence that I just typed has three sections underlined in red or blue. The urgency of autocorrect often forces me to fix my mistakes as soon as they appear but it ruins the flow of my writing. I end up spending twice as long working because I have to remember where I was. The worst interruptions are the mistakes it detects mid-sentence that are only mistakes because the sentence isn’t complete. Like when I’m missing a period as I try and think of the right way to end a sentence.

I remember there used to be a delay for autocorrect, when computers weren’t as capable machines you would have to wait until you stopped typing and then your whole document would be underlined, more like how revising a hand-written paper works. In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr talks about how he senses his writing changing depending on the medium he uses to write, whether it be keyboard and mouse, typewriter, or pen and paper. Friedrich Nietzsche had a similar observation after learning to write on a metal ball, how his writing was more machine-like. I feel autocorrect’s persistence changes a writer’s writing similarly to how a writer’s writing might change over mediums. Even if you seclude yourself tp a cabin in the woods, away from any internet or mobile reception, you will still be called away from your thoughts by autocorrect’s pleas for attention.

My Voice is Gone

Autocorrect loves providing handy little suggestions to make your writing more concise or clearer. It does a really good job of this sometimes. It makes me reflect on the words I choose in a sentence. The problem I have is that I find it wanting to take away my voice and autocorrect has difficulty understanding the tone of my writing sometimes. I know I can use “must” instead of “have to” or “like” instead of “just as” but I don’t want to all the time. It’s especially a pain when two autocorrect services disagree with each other on what words are the most appropriate.

I understand that my voice is not even my voice. It’s a product of the millions of words I’ve heard or read throughout my lifetime combined with all the notes I’ve gotten on writing and grammar while in school. It’s still my voice though. I don’t always want to use the most professional or efficient words. I like simple series of small inefficient words sometimes. It’s bad enough that writing is becoming more and more generic as the population turns to ChatGPT to develop their half-baked thoughts into ideas, does autocorrect need to pick the best phrasing for everyone to use?

What’s the fix? Turninf off autocorrect?

There’s a reason why I use Grammarly on top of the generic autocorrect. I make a lot of mistakes. I do a lot of writing and I can’t afford to be constantly turning them both on and off every time I need to write out a thought. Are my drafts forever plagued with these obnoxious lines?

I found two settings under Word while writing this article that somewhat help with this problem. Under proofing, you can disable “Check spelling as you type” and “Mark grammar errors as you type.” This only stops autocorrect from showing in a current sentence as you are typing it out. As soon as you stop for a second, it’s there. Grammarly doesn’t even have a similar setting.

The solution is to suck it up and try to ignore those screaming red lines. Keep the words flowing and don’t look back until a draft is complete. Until demand for an easy-to-access pause button on autocorrect becomes widespread, which it probably won’t, nothing is likely to change. How unfortunate for me.