OPINION: Smartphones don't know hickenloopers

Nov. 26—If you have arthritis in your thumbs, texting is very difficult, but voice text is even worse — especially if you have a hillbilly accent. The iPhone has serious homonym trouble, and I suspect the Android is just as bad.

A little over six years ago, I wrote a column in which I bemoaned the stupidity of smart phones. They haven't gotten any smarter, although someone told me the other day that "they" — he didn't specify who "they" are — had "started a major update for voice services." I'll believe it when I see it.

When it comes to homophone or homograph, it matters not, and if you need to look up the words, you should stop right there while you're behind. Lately, the worst homophone problem has been "affect" vs. "effect." Voice text can't tell a verb from a noun. I understand the confusion between adjectives and nouns and their derivatives, but nouns vs. verbs? Voice text needs to go back to grade school. Anyone who did that bad of a job, back in my day, would get a knuckle rap by an irate teacher with a wooden ruler.

I was trying one day to wish one of my friends "Happy birthday!" For some reason, the phone translated it as, "Halt virus, Sarah!" Fortunately, I caught the disturbing message before I hit "send." I've also wished a "Haiku bubba" of "Haiku bishop" to few friends, although I have no clue how my iPhone got "bubba" in its dictionary, unless it has a hankering for shrimp.

I'm sure whoever invented the autocorrect function for smartphones figured he was doing poor spellers a favor. Wrong. The first sentence in this paragraph could easily be translated by one of these devices as: "Im shore waffle impending the autoharp friction for smartphones factored he was dong poor smellers a flavor." I've seen it happen. And when it does, everything thinks you've had an aneurysm, or despite everything they thought they knew about you, it turns out you're dumber than a barrel of hair.

I know from experience that you shouldn't make fun of someone's spelling or grammar when he or she may have been victimized by an arrogant smartphone. I used to gig people about their poor spelling, but rarely in a vicious and demeaning way like some do these days. I just figured I was being funny and "in character" because I'm an editor.

Back when I relied solely on a keyboard, a person who had been a friend since grade school derided me on a public thread and told me that being blessed with exceptional spelling capabilities obviously made me feel superior to others, although this was an illusion. It took years to repair that relationship. Then, in 2013, I got my first cell phone. I know that seems odd for someone in my profession, but until a few years ago, we got no cell signal where we live, so we still had a land line. And if wasn't at home, I was at work, or with my husband, who's had a cell since 2000.

I got a rude awakening the first time I tried to make a post on my phone and realized it was gibberish. I can't hit those tiny keys with thumbs or index fingers, and my arthritis exacerbates the situation. Adding to the frustration is my fairly extensive vocabulary; phones often misinterpret your words, sometimes embarrassingly so. Especially when it comes to misappropriate apostrophes and homonyms.

I'm probably one of the best spellers on anyone's Facebook "friends" list, but anyone who hasn't caught a typo in some of my posts or comments (or columns, for that matter) either isn't very observant, or is such a poor speller he or she wouldn't notice my garbled missives. Thank God Facebook added the "edit" mode some time ago, because I wind up correcting almost everything I post, sometimes two or three times.

You don't have to be on social media to suffer this plight; you can confine your activities to texting and emails and still make a fool of yourself. Several years ago, I was texting a former colleague about something, when I informed her, "I'll be outside for 29 Mounties." She probably thought I was doing something unspeakable with a posse of Canadian law enforcement officials before I hastily explained I had meant, "I'll be outside for 29 minutes." Instead of the intended "yep," I've accidently responded to several people with the word "urp," which could be deemed insulting.

I have many cat lovers among my friends. A few years back, one of them (a friend, not a cat) told me about a Facebook thread wherein someone had produced a discombobulated message that indicated consumption of cat food. She meant to ask the other person, "You like kitty treats?" What came out on screen was, "You lick kitty teats?" Another friend commented on a cat photo that I had a "hickenlooper" on my hands. Neither one of us had a clue what she meant. The same could be said when I advised someone to "modicum motive calm." Whatever.

There are words I routinely mistype, or my phone routinely misinterprets. I was looking forward to some "repose" a couple of times, but observers thought I wanted "repulse." I've tried to assert that I "remember" something, but it comes out "I relent." And with increasing frequency, I begin a sentence with "I think...," and the resultant verbiage is "I honk. ..." Which gives rise to the acid retort to ill-informed people who always begin sentences with "I think." Clearly, they don't.

Probably the greatest source of amusement for friends is when I continually refer to my husband Chris as "Christ." Not even close, but he doesn't mind the comparison.