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Thursday, September 11, 2008

When it comes to words you need the human touch

The Bad Science mini-blog put me onto a story about "The Clbuttic Mistake" - how automated software is replacing words which are deemed offensive/obscene, even if those words are in the middle of other words. So you end up with sentences like this:
"President Abraham Lincoln was buttbuttinated by an armed buttailant after a
life devoted to the reform of the US consbreastution."

I particularly like the American 'Family Organisation' who decided to ensure gays were properly labelled, but then found the software was labelling runner Tyrone Gay as Tyrone Homosexual.

As a proof-reader, I'm quite glad that this proves why you need humans to proof-read. It's nice to know you're irreplaceable.

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