What am I to make of the fact

that my Samsung Galaxy tablet incorrects my 'P.S.'s to 'Please. Sorry.'s?

¡Doh!

Punctuation thus becomes the signature of cultures. The hot-blooded Spaniard seems to be revealed in the passion and urgency of his doubled exclamation points and question marks ("Caramba! Quien sabe?")...

- Pico Iyer, 'In Praise of the Humble Comma', Time

Why, Google, wiz zees 'andy auto-corrects you are rilly spoileen guz

Il a etait manger par le Gare de l’Est

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Dickensian status update

Cartoon above the old subs' desk at the Sinde. At one end of a long oak table is Charles Dickens, head in hands, sobbing. At the other, a Victorian sub, his quill raised above a manuscript, saying, "Come now, Mr Dickens, it was either the best of times or the worst of times. It surely can't have been both."

- Nick Cohen, Facebook.

Splendid

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Damn You, Auto Correct!

Who'd be a writer?

Another egregious incorrect, this time at the expense of Geoff Dyer, in a newspaper article in which he talks about the life of the writer (without reference to having your prose screwed over by ham-fisted subs).

To wit:

1) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked". To see how Styron got away with it is the more interesting question in my and Martin Amis's view. (Styron's novel was, for Amis, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [submitted copy]

2) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked" (Styron's novel was, for him, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [edit published]

In fairness, the Guardian editors admit to this shocker at the bottom of the piece (online edition). To their detriment, though, it looks suspiciously like the missing sentence was removed a) in accordance with a widespread editorial hatred of italics, and b) by someone who hasn't heard of Martin Amis.

Confession!

mea culpa from the Times' literary editors for a classic incorrect:

Correction
An error was introduced last week into Ian Brunskill's review of Anna Funder's novel All That I Am, erroneously describing her first book, Stasiland, as a novel: it is not, as Brunskill originally stated. 

InDefinition - 20

incorrect, vb. to take, as editor, something that is right/clever and change it to something that's not, in accordance with personal ignorance/verbal agililty.