I didn't mean that

For me, predictive text is the way to go. It’s come a long way since it was first introduced, and has a respectable dictionary. However, it has one glaring oversight. Something myself and my housemate Sarah Jane Chambers noticed whilst sipping on scones. It doesn’t have ‘fuck’. Or any other expletive, for that matter. It is totally innocent, apparently.

If I want to write ‘fuck’, it suggests ‘dual or duck’. Name me one person who doesn’t live in the country that will use either of those words more than ‘fuck’. It can’t be done. Fact. Now stop thinking.

As much as it does miss out a vital part of my vocabulary, it does also make sense. It protects the more easily offended from being asked, “Did you mean, ‘fistfucker’?” You may be intending to send a perfectly honourable text to one of your family members, but instead of saying “Hey aunt!”, accidentally say “Hey cunt!”

So you have to go back to typing in the letters yourself, for those crucial curses. The only problem is, I often forget to turn the predictive text back on, and carry on unwittingly, sending out texts like ‘Gdw gmw wmt dmgmg?’ for the rest of the day.

Check out Bill Bailey's song about the problems with texting.

Another problem with using predictive text is that you don’t always use the punctuation you had intended. This can have a big impact on the meaning, and dangerous if you’re in the early part of a relationship and are asked a direct question. I was once asked by text “do you miss me?” Now this is the first time she had asked this question. It’s one of those more vulnerable moments when you open your heart to someone, and say, kiss or cut me. I wanted to end my response with a love affirming, “miss you!” I text back immediately to reassure her, but went wrong. I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I instead ended with the challenge, “miss you?”

This was less love affirming than it was relationship ending.

I’ve become more of a fan of the exclamation mark of late. It suggests positivity and energy. However, I do draw the line at using them to ‘enhance’ a joke. I believe it does not have this quality. However, this is not a unanimous view. One not shared by an older generation. You see it worst when your parents join facebook to share comments! Make unfunny, parent jokes! Like, you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!

They seem to think the exclamation mark has some inherent comedy value, which will transform their shitty little aside to comedy gold. Every time I see that exclamation mark, I think of their face, a prize of glee, their eyes wide with farcical madness, barely able to contain their own laughter as they add the punctuation, and now as they see it for themselves, well they’ve never seen anything so funny. And then for a wild second it occurs to them, how could they make this funnier? No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly. But already their right hand is holding down the big shift key, and their left is edging guiltily towards the ‘1’. It hasn’t even been entered, but already the suspense is too much. Their face begins to crack as sharp and shallow breaths are taken, and then the finger comes slamming down, crashing through the keyboard, lodging the ‘1’ into a permanent state of ‘pressed’. The !!s file one after another, replicating like chromosomes in mitosis. An endless stream, a parade of mirth in symbols. The laughter is coming thick and fast now and the parent is struggling to find breath. He has never laughed this much in his life. It is unbearable. He has to leave, but his eyes hold fast, as if in a trance; there is no looking away. The joyous hiccups have turned to uncontrollable wheezing to epileptic fit. The eyes are bulging and the tongue drying up. He clamps his jaw in order to stop himself, but succeeds only in smashing his teeth like dishes, the shards of which he breathes in, slicing his lungs into wet pillowcases. He dies a bloody and unfunny death.

May this be a warning.