Stipulating that autocorrect is sometimes auto-incorrect, and that not all people are native English speakers, the number of social media posts in which people refer to “a women” is disturbing.
I don’t know if this is the result of a failing education system, or just a passive form of sexism, but it bothers me. I’m about to start actively correcting it in people’s posts, downvotes/harassment be damned.
If I’m going to live in a world where my rights are slowly stripped away, they could at least correctly spell the name of the group I belong to as they do it.
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I don’t think this is something to worry about, people confuse this stuff all the time, „man“ and „men“ is also used falsely all the time, just like „their“ and „they‘re“ etc.
In the case of non-native speakers, are they corrected but then insist on spelling it wrong? I feel like there’s almost no malice in regards to this.
(and yes, auto-correct will sometimes fail)
Wow! I’ve noticed this too and it’s a personal pet peeve. I didn’t think anyone else cared about this haha. People say it too, particularly on social.
I honestly can’t see the connection to sexism here.
I hate to be dismissive as well, but like..
It’s too much to ask people to distinguish between:
There/they’re/their
Your/you’re
Than/then
As well as NOT using “could of” (SO wrong!) instead of “could’ve” (or could have!)
(wo)men instead of (wo)man is the same thing. Seeing it as sexist is just gonna make you waste time on unnecessary feelings. The bigger issue imo is standalone “female” instead of woman as well as calling adult women “girl”, those things aren’t just brainfart typos
I have not seen this enough to make me angry. To/too, then/than, they’re/their/there, laid/layed, paid/payed are all things that I see on a daily basis that make me want to scream. And anyone using the word “I’s” instead of “my” is automatically assumed to be a non-reader in my book.
Where are you seeing this? Can you please provide an example?
To me it’s just one in a very, very long list of chronically misused words in digital communication that is equally related to long failed education systems and shitty ai powered autocorrects that have gotten worse than when clippy ran things
I wish there were a gentler way to correct people’s spelling on social media. I often see people confuse “Horde” and “Hoard”, and am often met with hostility when I try to correct them.
I’ve also seen lots of people who will refer to a trans person as “a trans”, in the same way some people will refer to black people as “the blacks”. It makes me wonder if they wouldn’t rather be using a slur if they could get away with it.