anghara (anghara) wrote,
anghara
anghara

Beware the spellchecker...

Many of us who wrestle words for a living know the perils of ye olde "search and replace" gambit. My favourite apocryphal story is of the hapless writer who wished to change the name of his protagonist from David to Derek and did a global MS search-and-replace on the two names... which ended up with him being called, amidst much guffawing, to explain the alternate-universe masterpiece of Michaelangelo's Derek. One of my own recent snicker-worthy examples was replacing "Tina" as a character name, seeing as the story she featured in already had several characters whose names began with a T and my editor thought it might be a good idea not to tempt fate. So - just to keep it close to my original vision - I changed her name to Kristin.

And got laughed at mercilessly when rdeck,who was helping me proofread, pointed to an abomination of a word which read "desKristintion"... which used to be a perfectly good desTINAtion in a previous incarnation.

Now, via jaylake, there's this.

You just have to love the idea of tens of thousands of worker bees commanded by Queen Elizabeth...
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  • We provide... Leverage

    What suricattus and matociquala say here, cosigned: If I am a guest at a convention you are attending, or simply a fellow attendee, and…

  • A timely PSA...

    Christmas is coming and you may be thinking about what to give the readers inyour life. If you are interested in giving a signed book as a gift…

  • An anniversary approaches.

    Someone brought this to my attention today, and it is eerily appropriate to some of my own recent thoughts. Because, you see, there is an odd time…