{"id":9702,"date":"2016-11-16T21:20:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T02:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9702"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:46:25","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:46:25","slug":"yes-thing-is-an-actual-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9702","title":{"rendered":"Yes, “thing” is an actual word"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was happily writing\u00a0away on my iPad and typed the sentence, “That isn’t a bad thing.”<\/p>\n

A word suggestion popped up: “thang.”<\/p>\n

You read that right. Autocorrect suggested a facetious mispronunciation\u00a0to replace an actual word. There’s my proof – the featured image above is an unaltered screen shot.<\/p>\n

I really couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n

Then I looked down at the auto-suggest tab.<\/p>\n

\"thang\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The offerings included “thingy.”<\/p>\n

I found that outrageous\u00a0as well. However, the origin of “thingy” is surprisingly long ago – 1880s, according to Dictionary.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The actual word I had typed, “thing,” was only offered in quotes in the far left on the auto-suggest bar, which is what happens when you’ve typed a word that the program doesn’t understand and wants to replace.<\/p>\n

OK. We really HAVE gone too far.<\/p>\n

The experience was surreal,\u00a0disorienting, a little Orwellian. Why\u00a0would I be prompted to use\u00a0a fake, slang word to replace a real, normal, dictionary word?<\/p>\n

I’ve pondered this when autocorrect capitalizes every use of the words Cubs and Giants. What?? It’s not like I’m a sportswriter who has opted to capitalize those words myself.<\/p>\n

Are professional sports teams more important than the correct spelling of little bears and big people?<\/p>\n

The bigger question is: What’s the long-term effect on kids who grow up with\u00a0computers that suggest “thang” to\u00a0replace “thing”?<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2014, the year iOS 8 launched with a little thingy bar to give you word suggestions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was happily writing\u00a0away on my iPad and typed the sentence, “That isn’t a bad thing.” A word suggestion popped up: “thang.” You read that right. Autocorrect suggested a facetious mispronunciation\u00a0to replace an actual word. There’s my proof – the featured image above is an unaltered screen shot. I really couldn’t believe it. Then I … read more Yes, “thing” is an actual word<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[36,448,305],"class_list":["post-9702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-36","tag-technology","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9702"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9713,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702\/revisions\/9713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}