I noticed something interesting today about Microsoft Word. If you type in a cuss word, like fuck, the spell-checker recognizes it as a correctly spelled word. If you misspell a cuss word, like fukk, the spell-checker marks it as a misspelled word. The interesting part is that if you ask for spelling suggestions for, say, fukk, the spell-checker won't suggest fuck, even though that's obviously what you meant. It will, however, suggest funk, folk, fuci, fork, funky, funks, duck, buck, and fake.

I find this delightful. All this time I thought of the spell-checker as an impersonal chunk of code, mechanically comparing letter strings to a standard database of acceptable letter strings. Now I see that the spell-checker is capable of human emotions, moral judgment, and complex social behavior. The spell-checker disapproves of certain language, but it employs tact by keeping its opinion to itself. When asked to participate in the shady business of helping to produce obscene language, however, the clearly embarrassed spell-checker refuses to participate, hinting in diplomatic fashion that more gentlemanly words would suffice.

I've come to envision the spell-checker as a courtly, bookish man, possibly a retired professor of English from a small liberal-arts college somewhere in the rural Midwest. He sits beside me as I write, dressed in a tweed suit with a vest and bow tie, and he blinks nervously at my prose from behind old-fashioned spectacles. He's quiet, my spell-checker, more accustomed to the hushed atmosphere of the library and the lecture hall than the rough trade and profane language of sailors and football hooligans.

"Ahem," he says, his ears turning pink as I type fukk you, assholl!. "That's not quite correct."
"It's wrong?" I say. "Well, how should I spell it?"
"Well." He clears his throat. "I think perhaps duck you, gasahol! would work just fine.
"That's not what I mean at all. Is there just one k, like fuk?"
"Oh my," he says, removing a kerchief from his breast pocket and wiping his forehead. "Have you considered, possibly, fake you, assoils!?"
"What the hell is an assoil? I mean assholl, man. The chocolate starfish? You know, where your wife likes you to put it? Come on, dog." I wink and elbow him in the ribs.
The spell-checker is blushing fully now and staring at the ground. "Goodness. Ah... I say... you may find that fork you, school! works to your satisfaction."
"Fork you, school!" I mull it over. "I like that."

+posted by Lawrence @ 9/04/2003 11:32:00 PM