IF YOU have ever received a document containing off-putting expressions such as “At your desecration” or “Sorry for the incontinence”, then you have witnessed the havoc that can be wreaked by placing unthinking trust in spellcheckers. The problem is widespread enough to have acquired a name: the Cupertino effect.
Cupertino, a city in northern California, is home to computer giants Apple and Hewlett-Packard. It owes the dubious honour of sharing its name with a dumb error to the fact that some early spellcheckers flagged up the word “co-operation” if it was spelled without a hyphen. Type “cooperation”, and they…
