Mind Your I's & U's

Most of us spend at least a good part of our day, and a good part of the night too, in writing text messages on cell phones. Most of the time, one of the two parties is firing messages at a very rapid pace. That may be due to rush, anger, suspicion, better coordination of fingers, flexible thumbs or just for the heck of it.

Just like in older times some people would talk fast, and a significant part of such talk had insignificant nonsense, in the post-WhatsApp times, some people type fast. No, no, I won’t say the same to their content because typing fast doesn’t mean they are saying a lot. Mostly, ‘fast-typers’ of texts complete one sentence in 6 or 7 volleys, that too if the sentence is brief, e.g., ‘I don’t think so’ or ‘I’m not sure’.

This onslaught of messages-by-parts reminds one of the bursts of an automatic pistol, if not Kalashnikov. I don’t like to use violent metaphors, but this one is pertinent. As we see in movies (that’s the only place where I have seen such bursts), only a few bullets hit the target. If a hero is being shot at, all bullets are dodged.

Quite like the bullets that do not hit the target, our fingers often hit the adjacent and the wrong keys, giving the resulting word an entirely different meaning. On top of that, if the cell phone has an auto-spell or auto-correct function on, the soup thickens and the auto-correct adds irony to an error.

I find the hide-n-seek between auto-correct and manual straightening amusing as well as confusing. Amusing, you all know why, but confusing because I suspect an intelligent and naughty design behind the apparently politically neutral algorithms: Try typing COAS, and the auto-correct will suggest chaos.

I discovered this recently when reflecting on COAS’s advice to the PM to deal with the dharna prudently. I got chaos for COAS and fool for cool. The letter c is right beneath f, like a boot to democracy in Pakistan.

That’s where a starred addendum comes very handy, and I ended up sending two: *COAS (not chaos), and *cool (not a fool). But I guess by then the damage was done and a discovery had been made.

When I was in school, an Urdu verse intrigued me a lot. But like most of the intelligent things in my life, I was one able to decipher and enjoy it after I left the university:

"Ik nuqte ne mehrm se mujrum bna dya/ hum dua likhte rahe voh dagha parrhte rahe"

Applying this verse to the above example, we can dare translate: ‘One C that I didn’t see effed up the compliment / I wrote cool, but they got fool’. Beware of the autocorrect tool and careless digiting.

The purpose of this piece is to caution you, my dears. In older times, to caution you from inadvertent errors and mistakes, they would say: ‘Mind your Ps and Qs’. But since P & Q are literally poles-apart on the cell phones’ keyboard, it’s time to mind other letters.

Now that FIA, IB, ISI, MI, CID, and rest of the sensitive agencies are all set to perform the insensitive job of snooping at Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp and whatnot, we must mind our Is & Us, in particular.

Allegations of compromising national security and committing blasphemy aside, speed typing and wrong lettering can cause social anarchy in our intimate relations and marital harmony too.

I, therefore, would like to give some tips. First, turn off the autocorrect function. With that, at least one demon would be put to rest. Two, either type slowly or read a message before sending. Particularly, if you are a man with even vague and meek propensity of harassment - re-reading is better than recalling.

For instance, in ‘open the gate’, h is highly likely to replace g in the last word, and you will get instant hate because you asked for it. Similarly, be extra careful while cursing your ‘fate’, and don’t type ‘date’.

A friend once almost fatally wrote to his wife, ‘she is in my lust’ as he fumbled on u in place of i. If you nitpick here and like to invoke ‘Freudian Slip’, I wouldn’t mind much but it may be a harsher judgment.

Similarly, while telling your beau that you’re watching a live show, make sure she doesn’t get ‘love show’, and while sharing a planning type text about your son, don’t end up confessing ‘Our Sin’.

After all, premonition is the first step towards prevention.