Comments on: When Spellcheckers Attack: Perils of the Cupertino Effect

By: Write Expression blog · The Cupertino effect

Write Expression blog · The Cupertino effect — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:47:51 +0000

[...] there is an official term for this – it’s called the Cupertino effect. Benjamin Zimmer of OUP says that when writers and translators for the European Union wrote “cooperation” [...]

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:31:16 +0000

A manager at a company I worked for had the last name “Erickson.” Spellcheck always changed to to “Erections.”

By: Terminologia etc. » Blog Archive » Correttori ortografici ed effetto Cupertino

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:54:11 +0000

[...] ma è rimasto il termine effetto Cupertino: è descritto in dettaglio da Ben Zimmer nell’OUP blog, con un riferimento all’articolo in cui è apparso inizialmente. [...]

By: Terminologia etc. : Barack Obama, il correttore ortografico e l'effetto Cupertino

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:32:03 +0000

[...] è rimasto il termine effetto Cupertino: è descritto in dettaglio da Ben Zimmer nell’OUP blog, con un riferimento all’articolo in cui è apparso inizialmente. [...]

By: Douglas2

Douglas2 — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:42:18 +0000

In response to JP: I’m sure that it is not writers trusting an American spellchecker who spell “organize” with an “ize” ending. It is much more likely to be confident English spellers who override the incorrect correction provided by British editions of Microsoft Word, or less confident ones who nevertheless bother to look up the word in the OED or Fowlers.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:21:26 +0000

I worked in a Government Prosecutions section for many years.

Word spell checker would very sweetly ask me if I meant Persecutions section. Which of course the “clients” would have agreed with.

By: JD

JD — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:33:09 +0000

Working as a sub editor (copy editor) for a UK magazine, I often find American English spellings appearing in copy submitted by our (British) writers. The reason? Writers using a spellchecker based on an American dictionary and believing that they really have spelt ‘organise’ wrongly (for example). Either that or they run through and automatically ‘correct’ all their lovely British English spellings.

Shudder.

By: How Do "Miss Steaks" Go Unnoticed? It's Along Story : OUPblog

How Do "Miss Steaks" Go Unnoticed? It's Along Story : OUPblog — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:05:35 +0000

[...] week’s column focused on the havoc that automated spellcheckers can wreak when a suggested [...]

By: The English Teacher Blog » Blog Archive » The Cupertino Effect

The English Teacher Blog » Blog Archive » The Cupertino Effect — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 07:01:59 +0000

[...] Ben Zimmer’s blog on the Cupertino Effect has more examples, as does The Language Log. [...]

By: VL

VL — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:41:44 +0000

When I was in high school (like 20 years ago), there was a memo that was sent around that had a very obvious typo that was caused by the spellchecker. The memo read: “on [whatever date], there is to be no loitering in pubic areas due to preparation for evening events.”

By: Sven DiMilo

Sven DiMilo — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:22:20 +0000

I turned off Word’s spellchecker long ago. I’m a biologist, and my writing just stumps it too often. The last straw was when, in an article about the Sonoran mud turtle, it kept changing the specific epithet of Kinosternon sonoriense to “snootiness.”

By: Jo Ashburn

Jo Ashburn — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:17:20 +0000

Just in case nobody has mentioned it, the probable reason Cupertino was in those spellcheckers to begin with is because that is where the Apple offices are located.

By: Bob Rosenberg

Bob Rosenberg — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:45:01 +0000

For a *very* long time–close to a decade and a half–and up to at least version 12, WordPerfect has responded to “Jersy” with

Jerky
Jerry
Jersey
Garcia
. . .

“Garcia”???

Got to love that one.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:09:36 +0000

When writing about my military experience in the Philippines, I typed Subic Bay. My spell check suggested Pubic, a Freudian alternative.

By: Scott Belyea

Scott Belyea — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:47:14 +0000

“Even the most competent copy editors can be led astray by a spellchecker every now and then.”

Hmmm … an interesting notion, but I don’t think I buy it. How can a spellchecker “lead me astray”?

“…if you leave the first letter off of identified, you run the risk of your spellchecker changing the word to dentrified.”

Good grief … “risk”?? You mean these crack copy editors see “dentrified” in place of “identified” and let it pass?

Silliness …

By: Ben Zimmer

Ben Zimmer — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:47:13 +0000

Will: Even the most competent copy editors can be led astray by a spellchecker every now and then. You can bet the folks at the New York Times copy edit desk are no slouches, but there's a whole book of outrageous errors that have appeared in their paper, Kill Duck Before Serving. You might also want to check out the "Ask the Editor" feature in the Times earlier this week, wherein editor Phil Corbett admits "we make a lot of mistakes."

Dave: Sorry to see that the link to the EU article about the Cupertino effect is no longer available. I'm checking with their webmaster to see if there's still a link somewhere.

UPDATE: Via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I was able to find a PDF version of the EU article (Elizabeth Anne Muller, "Cupertino and After," Language Matters, Sep. 2000, pp. 9-10).

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:05:48 +0000

Ben the link for the Cupertino effect is broken. As a Canuck I’ll ask is it center or centre? Problems everywhere.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:41:27 +0000

At the height of the Clinton scandal, a friend typed an email about about Clinton being a disgrace to the Whitehouse, but his TapSpell spell checker suggested he meant ‘whorehouse’

(it should have been 2 words)

By: Will

Will — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:27:51 +0000

Part of the problem, of course, is the supposition that sources such as newspapers (and I would go so far as to say the UN and other organizations that have an investment in clear communication) can save money by relying upon software instead of shouldering the expense of having a professional proofreader on staff. The results are, naturally, laughable.

There is no substitute for a competent copy editor!

By: Tawnya Lou

Tawnya Lou — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:51:04 +0000

I’d hate to see this get “fixed”. As Scott suggests, good proofreading is all that’s required to catch it, and the it can be one of the bright spots in an otherwise dreary exercise. My family loves my new nickname, “Tuna Loaf”.

By: Scott Belyea

Scott Belyea — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:07:57 +0000

My sympathy is limited.

Now that we have good tools which allow us to reduce the burden of careful proofreading, we whine because we don’t like the results of not proofreading what the tools suggest …

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:03:28 +0000

A while back, I worked for the state of Alaska, which had a governor named Hickel. When I typed his name, my spell checker would offer me two suggestions: hickey and pickle.