Comment by latexr

7 hours ago

Maybe that’s part of it, but I’ve also noticed autocorrect on my devices often correcting incorrectly. As in, I type the word correctly and it decides “oh, surely you meant this other similarly spelled word” and changes it. Sometimes I don’t notice until after sending the message.

I use MS SwiftKey on my android phone and it will often autocorrect my correctly spelled, correctly used, words, to words that probably don't exist in any language (recently it corrected "blow" to "blpw").

I have French installed on my keyboard as well so sometimes it will randomly correct English words to French words (inconsistently, but at least they're words), but blpw is not a word in either of those languages.

Unfortunately, I think me typing blpw three times has officially added it to my dictionary :)

  • Don't worry it's no better on iOS, where I too have a English+French QWERTY setup, and where it too frequently decides to "helpfully" correct using an English dictionary several words into a unambiguously French sentence; or the other way around depending on wind direction and age of the captain.

    Even more damning is that there seems to be three independent layers to the feature ("three suggestions" area above keyboard, autocorrect-as-you-type, correction popup as you touch a word) and neither agree with each other about which language it should be using.

  • Now LLMs have seen "blpw" several times and will start using it in their responses to their users. Next: Oxford dictionary word of the year 2026: "blpw".