Now that “fat-finger” is an accepted term—at least within the American Dialect Society—we have a name for what frustrates us texters. And now, smart phones, thinking they’re smarter than we are, want to offer a solution.
When my smart phone suspects I have misspelled a word, it auto-corrects it. Moreover, when I type three letters, it tries to save me time by auto-typing what it thinks is the rest of the word I mean to type.
In an effort to save users time, the smarty-pants device can cause us great embarrassment.
I know of two instances in which a smart phone changed ordinary words–face and facts–to “feces.” I saw one online, stating that “his feces lights up when you enter the room.”
I saw one example in which a person asked a colleague to “come here for a sex.”
Recently I was texting my son and told him that company was coming for dinner. At least that’s what I meant to say. On his end, my message said that Cosby was coming for dinner. This week the darned thing changed “vice versa” to “vice versatile.”
Laugh-out-loud examples are all over the Internet, including at Damn You Auto Correct and FU, Auto Correct.
Can you top them? What’s the most embarrassing auto-correct you have had committed against your fat-finger?
Word Nymph 
I have an old phone – no auto correct. I have dropped it in the pedi bath and the toilet (uck) and it is still working. I pray it keeps on working as all those new fangled options just overwhelm me anyway 🙂
I worked for Joe Biden, but the Microsoft corporation thinks I worked for someone named “Bidet”
Now that you mention it, I’ve seen a couple of auto-correct issues that directly defy me. I cannot remember the word, but the system would auto-correct it–it was spelled correctly, but was apparently not it its tiny-minded dictionary. I was unable to override the “correction”, and had to choose another word entirely to get my point across. Grumble.
I just deleted the “service” immediately. Ticked me off! Liz
Yes, bowl was corrected once to bowel and silly me, I didn’t double check the corrections.