Autocorrect Overrules Lexicographer's Text Message 847 Times in Single Day

Lexicographer Dr. Sandra Phoneme's smartphone autocorrect system overruled her intended text 847 times during a single workday Monday, replacing legitimate English words and technical linguistic terminology with what Dr. Phoneme described as 'a curated selection of incorrect alternatives chosen by an algorithm that has apparently never encountered the English language.' The most frequent corrections included 'etymon' changed to 'lemon' (23 instances), 'hapax' changed to 'happy' (18 instances), 'morpheme' changed to 'more free' (14 instances), and 'lemma' changed to 'llama' (11 instances). 'I texted my colleague about a problematic lemma and my phone told her I was having trouble with a llama,' Dr. Phoneme said. 'She asked if I needed veterinary assistance. I tried to clarify and the phone changed "headword" to "head word" with a space, which is a different thing entirely. I then typed "phonotactics" and the phone suggested I might mean "phone tactics," which is not a field of study.' The situation escalated when Dr. Phoneme attempted to text a colleague about 'the diachronic development of the English sibilant system.' Her phone rendered this as 'the dinosaur development of the English sibylline system,' a message her colleague described as 'fascinating but confusing.' 'Autocorrect is a prescriptivist nightmare,' Dr. Phoneme said. 'It operates on the assumption that common words are correct words and uncommon words are errors. This is exactly the philosophy that descriptive lexicography has spent a century fighting against. My phone is undoing my life's work, one text at a time.' Dr. Phoneme has disabled autocorrect on all devices and now types every word manually, a process she describes as 'slower but lexicographically honest.' Her typo rate has increased by approximately 400 percent. 'But at least the typos are mine,' she said.