Did I really just dream about fascist word processors?

This morning I woke up thinking about an aggressively auto-completing word processor. I’m not sure if this is something I thought up in my dream or if I’ve read about it somewhere recently. The word processor would learn how you write and, after a certain point, it would first correct your idiosyncratic mistakes and then force you to comply with the usage (vocabulary, sentence structure) patterns that it had created.

The point of the decidedly fascist auto-completing feature would be to limit and tighten up your language. You could expurge words or whole sentence constructs from your vocabulary—the program simply wouldn’t allow you to use them. When you tried to use forbidden words, the word processor could look up alternative words from a thesaurus or just delete the offending sentences. Just think how this would discipline your writing!

You could also create a usage database based on sample material, say a famous novel. Then the word processor would encourage (or rather force) you to conform to the form and style of the sampled material. Learn to write like your favorite author!

Of course, the fascist word processor would probably be a true horror to use. I already hate Word when it tries to auto-format or correct my text. Sometimes I WANT to write a word in uppercase. And someone should tell Word that when every single word in a document in misspelled, there might be something going on—like maybe the document is written in another language than Word’s been set to.

Word’s auto-correction wouldn’t be such a problem if the features weren’t so hard to turn off.

---

• October 14, 2003 at 14:31
  in Writing and all that follows

There are 3 other entries posted on this day.