You have no doubt had the shame of sending a text with a glaring mistake or the experience of trying to figure out why someone is suddenly texting you about ducks. While human error is inevitable, some of the tools we build for ourselves, like autocorrect, don’t always work as intended.
The “Autocorrect Fails” Facebook group is dedicated to those hilarious moments when your phone’s software decides to change a normal text into something very different. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites, and be sure to double-check your spelling before you comment your thoughts below.
More info: Facebook
#1 Omg
Image credits: Patty Hanson
#2 Craigslist For Everything
Image credits: Tim Scott
#3 #streak2
Image credits: Miguel Andrei Lofstrand
For ages, people have tried to find ways around the simple fact that most people, professionals included, will repeatedly make spelling mistakes in anything they write. This is why editors, proofreaders, and entire software companies like Grammarly still exist. Let’s face it, often we are in a hurry when we need to write something and the result can be all the hilarity we can see here.
The root of many of these issues, as well as better-publicized examples, comes from the simple problem of the spellchecker or autocorrect having an incomplete list of words. One of the most famous examples of this goes all the way back to at least 2007 when multiple people online noticed that many automated spellcheckers only knew the word "cooperation" when it was spelled without the hyphen.
#4 Sorry
Image credits: Patty Hanson
#5 Sent Some Texts To My Employees After Setting The Shift To Give Them The Rundown For The Night. I Was In A Hurry To Get Out Of There And Didn't Want To Get Stuck On The Phone. I Wanted To Let Him Know They Would Only Have Six Staff Until 6 Pm. Oops. Anonymous Post Bc Of My Job
Image credits: Anonymous participant
#6 I Think That's A Common Mistake
Image credits: Anthony Garcia
Older lists of words would only have “co-operation,” so when certain computers saw this word, they believed that it was simply a mistake. And for some reason, the “nearest” word to this mistake was “Cupertino,” the name of a town in California. The result was various, very official documents containing phrases like "South Asian Association for Regional Cupertino" and "presentation on African-German Cupertino".
#7 "Probably"
Image credits: Meg Stewart-Snoad
#8 Sorry
Image credits: Nicole Freeman
#9 Watch Out For Those Lizards
Image credits: Brian Rowe
To this day, this issue is referred to as the “Cupertino effect” which, simply put, is the often hilarious result of a spellchecker not having a word in its dictionary and making an “interesting” substitution. Other famous examples include Routers publishing an article where the "Muttahida Qaumi Movement" became the "Muttonhead Quail Movement."
#10 Lol
Image credits: Annie Mckenzie
#11 My Brother Was Trying To Text Me That He Would "Be By In A Minute" But His Phone Had Other Plans
Image credits: Crystal Hennessey
#12 Newbie Here! I Sent This To My Husband Yesterday. It Was Early And I Was At Work At Tired. I’m Up At 2 Am To Start Work A 3 Am
Image credits: Heather Feather
However, the “Cupertino effect” pales in comparison to the “Scunthorpe problem.” I’ll give you a moment to figure it out, it’s in the name. Long story short, the entire town of Scunthorpe struggled to create AOL accounts using their town's name because the site's filters kept detecting profanity.
#13 Well Done
Image credits: Miguel Andrei Lofstrand
#14 Here Is Classic One From The Internet
Image credits: Shane Clarke
#15 Message From The Dog Groomers
Image credits: Cassie Mattern
This issue is quite persistent, as lists of “banned words” are not static and constantly evolve. At the same time, this means more, unrelated words, like Scunthorpe, end up getting incorrectly flagged. The solution tends to be constant human intervention, something that spellcheck was invented to prevent.
#16 Me Trying To Date....yeah This Is Going Well
Image credits: Lyn Rumbaugh
#17 The Most Awkward Meeting After This
Image credits: Chelsea Himes
#18 Haha
Image credits: Colleen Szeifried
Other famous examples include shiitake mushrooms being misspelled, with a missing “i” and this word being marked as profanity. Fortunately, this particular instance has managed to rectify itself, as more people are familiar with the correct spelling of this Japanese word, as food blogging has taken off.
#19 This Is A Text I Sent To My Daughter Last Year...fail
Image credits: Colleen Eckman
#20 Angel
Image credits: The Language Nerds
#21 Omg
Image credits: Jamie Meyers Bredstrand
Similarly, one Twitter (now X) user from Luxembourg, having just created an account, tweeted (an apt use for the verb) “Finally! A pair of great tits (Parus major) has moved into my birdhouse!” and had their account banned almost instantly. Interestingly, upon review, Twitter support declined to unban the account.
#22 Asked My Husband About Dinner Plans. He Had An Interesting Declaration In Response
Image credits: Savannah Elizabeth
#23 This Definitely Belongs Here
Image credits: Vanessa Addington Brandt
#24 It Happened Again!!!!
Image credits: Rusty Baldridge
However, our text messages tend to not fall under such scrutiny, so spellcheck still insists on ducks ducking all over the place, even when not a single bird is present. As always with fails (spellcheck insists on “failure” but we all know it’s something else,) it really depends on where you are sitting. When it happens to you, it’s a tragedy, but hysterical when it happens to someone else.
#25 When You’re Having A Conversation With A Base Supervisor From Another Company About Fitted Sheets And There’s The Most Epic Fail Ever
Image credits: Courtney Noel
#26 Had This Glorious Disaster Happen The Other Night When Texting A Friend About My Dog Who Was Terrified Of The Fireworks Going Off Nearby. I Was Talking To Her About How He Wouldn't Take Treats From Me, And He Loves Food
Image credits: Hunter Phoenix McKinney
#27 This Was Rather Embarrassing
Image credits: Danielle Nicole
More commonly, it’s not so much that we misspell words, but that we over-rely on predictive text. Often it’s great, allowing us to fill in simple emails in moments, to keep some momentum going when writing certain sentences. But if you get used to it, predictive text becomes a crutch, with the writer simply missing the mistakes or misplaced words it gives and leaving it in the text.
#28 Asking My Daughter To Bring Me Red Licorice To The Hospital
Image credits: Susan Nelson Trudell
#29 Lol
Image credits: Brian Rowe
#30 Text From My 10 Yr Old!!! I Laughed Way Too Hard At This!
Image credits: Jennifer Phillips
Unfortunately, there is at least one instance where an autocorrect mistake ended up causing someone’s death when it changed “nutter” to “mutter” for one Lancashire man. While it’s unclear why this word would be so triggering, it instigated an argument that caused the recipient to attack the sender, leading to the former being stabbed in the heart.
#31 Lol
Image credits: Blair Lynn
#32 Hmmm
Image credits: Brian Rowe
#33 Lmao
Image credits: Mandy Murphy
#34 When You Talking To Your Client And Auto Correct Gets In The Way!!
Image credits: Colleen Stafford
#35 Say What?
Image credits: Douglas Miller
#36 Punctuation Is Important
Image credits: Brian Rowe
#37 Autocorrect Seriously Failed Me Today..... Sent This To My Mom.....should Have Said So You Want To Warn Him My Shoulder Feels Like Someone Socked Me Hard
Image credits: Lisa Thompson
#38 Cool
Image credits: Mandy Murphy
#39 I Had To Join To Share This Classic Conversation Between My 20 Year Old And Myself This Morning. Apparently The Nightclub Offers Krispy Koreans
Image credits: Gina Ramsay
#40 Gonna Go And Do Some Thugs Now
Image credits: Cassie Mattern
