The Dangers of Spell Check

Autocorrect. Spell check.

Whatever you call it, it’s a great tool that often makes writing much easier.

But it does have its quirks.

For example, I can’t get my iPhone to stop capitalizing the “a” in “apple”.

The whole topic of spell check does bring to mind an incident that occurred at the USCC/U.S. Citibanking Center during the ‘90s.

We were putting together a presentation for a visiting senior Citi executive so, of course, we all went into our dog-and-pony show mode.

A slide presentation (utilizing the overhead projector) was written up, explaining the origin of the USCC, our role in the U.S. Consumer Bank, major milestones & accomplishments to date & a whole bunch of really-fascinating information.

*yawn*

During this time, we had a college intern who was spending 6 weeks during the summer with us so we assigned her the task of printing out the presentation, making the overhead slides themselves & distributing hard copies for all attendees.

Seemed simple enough, no? She was a bright young lady & should have no problem completing the task flawlessly.

Our guest was due to arrive first thing in the morning & we’d ordered breakfast for everyone in the Board Room.

Next day comes & everyone gathers, awaiting the arrival of our special guest.

Just to make sure everything was just right, I ask our intern to see a copy of the presentation before we handed out any copies & began the formal presentation.

And all I can say is “Thank God I did!!!”…

I’m reading the very first page & something, er, interesting immediately catches my eye.

SUCK.

Yeah, SUCK!

Leading through the different pages, I see it everywhere.

SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK. SUCK.

Apparently, autocorrection will automatically replace “USCC” with “SUCK”, unless & until you overrule it & then add the acronym to its dictionary.

I could just imagine what kind of first impression that would have made on our guest!!!

I’m glad I had that feeling to take one last peek at the material before we went live.

We quickly scrambled to correct the error & print out new overheads & hard copies.

You can never be too careful & it never hurts to double-check your SHIT, er, I mean, stuff!

Thank you so much for listening!