In an email to a friend this morning, I wrote “interested” when I had intended to write “interest.”  The sentence contained the phrase, “your interest has outlasted…”

I noted it because the Watcher (that’s what I call the alien intelligence they have attached to my word processing program) put a dotted red line under “your.”  My guess is that It wanted me to write “you’re” because it is more likely that I would want to say “you’re interested” than that I would say “your interested.”  Certainly It is right about that, but the mistake wasn’t a bad contraction of “you are,” it was a typo of “interest.”

That’s not a simple typo repair.  If I had written “gimnasium” instead of “gymnasium,” It would catch the mistake and correct it.  I would have to see the correction being made just to know what had happened.  If, on the other hand, I had been trying to distinguish the uses of what we currently call a gymnasium from the much broader set of uses that Hellenistic gymnasium has under the generals of Alexander the Great, I might very well have tried to flag that distinction by referring to the modern kind as “merely a gimnasium,” and not really a “gymnasium.”

There are two issues here.  The first is that I sometimes make words up in order to help me make a point.  I have no objection when It calls those to my attention.  In It’s world, it is much more likely that I have made a mistake than that I am inventing a new spelling or a new form of a word in order to make a point.  For many years, I used the “word” maleficiaries in Public Policy classes to distinguish them from beneficiaries.  I explained what I was doing and why when I first made the distinction, and it lasted for the whole term.  There may have been some eye rolling toward the end of the term.

The first issue is this.  I think It should call my attention to a nonstandard use and assume, if I don’t go back and fix it, that I want it the way it was.  When it does that, I feel that it has performed a service for me.

The other issue is that sometimes It just won’t let go.  I could even go back and instruct It to “learn” that spelling (which seems too much, to me) but to do that, I would have to have it stable on the page, and sometimes that is a struggle.  There is a literary device I have needed to refer to from time to time.  It is called “chiasm.”  I had to fight to get that one.  I reiterated the spelling I wanted many times. Finally, I slapped a “learn this spelling” order on It and proceeded.  That being done, today’s use of “chiasm” created not so much as a murmur.

And It was right today, in suspecting that there was something wrong with the expression “your interested.”  It guessed the wrong thing, but it gave me a chance to go back and fix it.  But what happens when It develops a sense of acceptable grammar and I have to fight it to say what I want to say in the tone I want to use.  Then what?

Does anyone think It will tire of the game before I do?  Is there any way to instruct It to give me a little more freedom as a creator of messages?  I’m really not sure.