Your spell-checker demon has a name.
I wrote some textbooks after I retired, but they've never sold very well. OK, not at all. They were fun putting together, however, so I placed them on the "free stuff" page of this web site where you can amuse yourselves and/or direct your grandchildren to find out almost everything the average high school student might need to know about the structure of the English language.
That structure, in the realm of orthography (showing off again, I know), has been a problem since forever. Caxton was one of the earliest people who had to decide on some rules of spelling for users of his printing presses, and you can guess how many dialects he had to contend with.
Before Guttenberg and Caxton, in the Middle Ages there were monks transcribing texts by hand. Today, some of their ornately enhanced manuscripts are displayed in museums, and some of them contain the kind of errors that could only come from human failings. I may have told this anecdote before, but I'm old so I get to repeat myself.
Consider Brother Laborious copying away all morning, glancing over at the original and then reproducing it on the parchment before him. He takes a break. When he returns, his gaze goes to a line in the original that he has already copied, but tedium being what it was then and still is, he doesn't notice and carries on with his work. The result is a copied manuscript that has a ten-line repetition that no one notices or bothers to correct (white-out being some centuries in the future).
Oh, but someone must have noticed, you say. Well, maybe they did and they gave a name to the little demon sent by Satan to cause those transgressions with holy writ. Titivullus, he was. You can look up his genealogy somewhere but it's enough that the good fathers created the wee imp. Besides, you don't want to Google anything until the company smartens up with their map designations. Let it suffice that if your spell checker plunks in some word you never intended, you can blame Titivullus.
Today that spell-checker on your computer may "think" it knows better than you what word you wanted. If you go to Free Stuff on this site as I suggested before I got off on this story (I'm old, forgive me) you can scroll down to Fridge-Magnet Grammar. Then go to page 26 of that book for a version of Little Red Riding Hood that only a rogue spell-checker on crack could have created. Have fun. Titivullus certainly did.
Ladle Rat Rotten Hut
Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage honor itch offer lodge dock florist. Disc ladle gull orphan worry ladle cluck wetter putty ladle rat hut, end fur disc raisin pimple colder ladle rat rotten hut.
Wan moaning rat rotten hut's murder colder inset: "Ladle rat rotten hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter and shirker cockles. Tick disc ladle basking tudor cordage offer groin murder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake, dun stopper laundry wrote, end yonder nor sorghum stenches dun stopper torque wet strainers.
"Hoe-cake, Murder," resplendent ladle rat rotten hut, end tickle ladle basking and stuttered oft. Honor wrote tudor cordage offer groin murder, ladle rat rotten hut mitten anomalous woof.
"Wail, wail, wail," set disc wicket woof, "evanescent ladle rat rotten hut! Wares or putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?"
"Armor goring tumor groin murder's," reprisal ladle gull. "Grammars seeking bet. Armor ticking arson burden barter end shirker cockles."
"O hoe! Heifer blessing woke," setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, "Oil tickle shirt court tudor cordage offer groin murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an den — O bore!"
Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, end whinny retched a cordage offer groin murder, pick dinner window an sore debtor pore oil worming worse lion inner bet. Inner flesh disc abdominal woof lipped honor betting adder rope. Any pool dawn a groin murder's nut cup and gnat gun, any curdle dope inner bet.
Inner ladle wile, ladle rat rotten hut a raft attar cordage an ranker dough boll.
"Comb ink, sweat hard," setter wicket woof, disgracing is verse. Ladle rat rotten hut
entity bet rum and stud buyer groin murder's bet.
"Oh Grammar," crater ladle gull, "Wart bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!"
"Buttered lucky chew whiff, doling," whiskered disc ratchet woof, wetter wicket small.
"Oh Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomalous prognosis!"
"Buttered small your whiff," inserter woof, ants mouse worse waddling.
"Oh Grammar, water bag mousey gut! A nervous sore suture bag mouse."
Daze worry on forger nut gull's lest warts. Oil offer sodden throne offer carvers
and sprinkling otter bet, disc curl and bloat Thursday woof ceased pore ladle rat
rotten hut and garbled erupt.
Mural: Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.
No, I can't claim credit for it. If I knew, I'd acknowledge it and if you know, tell me.You can also buy the game Mad Gab (Patch Products Inc.© 1996) and have fun trying to guess that the phrase "Led suppress own" should be pronounced "Let's press on."
And now you press on. Our language is changing under our fingers as we type almost as fast as it is changing on our tongues, or the tongues of our young people. What was sinful to one generation is acceptable to the next.
You don’t like sentences that start with “And" or end with prepositions? Too bad; history will not care. Using “fun” in comparative and superlative forms not to your liking? Well, neither do I but it’s funner than sitting there pontificating about it. Some of the changes only affect speech so far, but text is never far behind.
Yes, you can teach levels of usage, but most of the little people you know are not going to grow up to be scholars submitting to the London Review of Books, and the boundaries of usage will keep blurring before your aging eyes.
Led suppress own. This faculty of speech made us what we are biologically and socially, and it still produces our best expressions of self and culture. Being midwife to the next generation of users is the best job in the world – the funnest.