Autocorrect

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Grammarist

Autocorrect is a software feature that corrects grammar and misspellings, making word suggestions as the user types. Autocorrect is a time-saving feature, though sometimes the suggestions that autocorrect makes are not what the user intends. Autocorrect may be used as a noun or a verb. Autocorrect is now a generic term, derived from the original programming which is spelled as AutoCorrect. AutoCorrect was invented by Dean Hachamovitch, working for Microsoft in the 1990s. When referring to a feature of Microsoft programs the correct spelling is AutoCorrect, using two capital letters. When referring to the same type of feature in software owned by other companies the word is not capitalized, as in autocorrect.

Examples

Tapping the highlighted word would let the recipient see what was originally typed, as well as the other alternative words that autocorrect could’ve chosen. (The Daily Express)

Say good-bye to autocorrect fails of days past and hello to a brave new world, one where you never have to worry about accidentally sending dirty texts to your parents or humiliating yourself while attempting to flirt with your crush. (Cosmopolitan Magazine)

Autocorrect is a mostly useful feature that watches for when people appear to have mistyped and when they do swaps in the word it thinks that people were meaning to write. (The Independent)

Most mobile phone users have suffered the indignity of an embarrassing autocorrect mistake, but smartphones may soon be smart enough to understand what we are trying to say. (The Telegraph)

By the late 1990s, Microsoft’s AutoCorrect could also scan a user’s text against a dictionary, then try to find the closest matches for any unknown strings of characters. (The New York Times)