The wonderful *

One of my biggest pet peeves is the ridiculous amount of typos one can make when chatting on IM. Of course, part of it is the product of typing rapidly, but there is also an undeniable element of general motor incompetence, and that's the bit that rankles. Disconcertingly often I'll glance at the screen to scan over what I have just chatted, and it will say:

Inihtar: How are you doing?
Ficali: I'm alrihgt. How are yuo?

Now that, to the objective observer, is just darned irritating. Doobie kindly offered up a theory for it. Something along the lines of having fat fingers that can't fit on the keyboard keys. Hmmph.

Chatting with Macklaine yesterday, and he recommended a resolution. Everytime you make a typo, he suggested, you should clarify by offering the correctly spelt word with an * at the end. so the conversation above would look like:

Inihtar: How are you doing?
Ficali: I'm alrihgt. How are yuo?
Ficali: alright*
Ficali: you*

I liked the idea and was keen to start adopting it immediately into my work chats, just to throw the ol' colleagues for a bender. Most of the communication at work happens over IM rather than email. Weird, eh. But the perfect context for experimenting with little fun games like the above. You know - even if no one else finds them fun or amusing.

But of course, as soon as I got all excited about it, I stopped making typos. I had to wait, chomping at the bit, for two entire days before my next typo presented itself. And then, disappointingly, it was with Macklaine himself. And that time round, I outdid myself.

Ficali: Macklaine, when are you next coming to visti?
Ficali: visiit*
Ficali: dammit
Ficali: visit**
Macklaine: LOL

Not quite the dignity I'd intended.
But Macklaine was tickled pink.

"Here's how to take it to the next level," he suggested. "When you're actually speaking to someone live, and you make a mistake in what you're saying, you have to then say the correct thing while signing an * to them."
"Eh?"
"Just make a big cross of your arms as you correct yourself."

Hmm, that strategy seems to be lacking a certain element of dignity. Besides, I'm always tripping myself up over my internal jumble of thoughts, and always having to come back and correct myself. I'm not quite sure Big Boss M and the other folks at work would take too kindly to this new enactment of the asterisk.