<p>from fmylife.com:</p>
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Today, I handed my PhD dissertation, which I have spent the past year researching and writing full-time. Last night, my roommate set an autocorrect on Word that changed "neither" to "nigger." I didn't notice until after I handed it in. My professor is black. FML
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<p>i would kill my roommate and bring his head on a stick to my professor.</p>
<p>honestly, i would beat the living **** out of someone with a tire iron if they did that to me.</p>
<p>Wow…</p>
<p>That probably isn’t true, but if it is, I would fear for the life of my roommate.</p>
<p>Oh man that is a classic. I’ll have to do that to one of my roomates someday.</p>
<p>Am i the only one who thinks this is not funny?</p>
<p>I really don’t think it is funny. I was serious when I said I would fear for the life of my roommate if that ever happened to me.</p>
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<p>Yes. You are morally better than all of us.</p>
<p>That’s terrible… Sorry for the OP on ■■■… I wouldn’t even know WHAT to do to correct the situation!!!</p>
<p>:(</p>
<p>This transends prank and achieves vandalism. </p>
<p>The roommate, if a student, should have his/her connection with the institution severed.</p>
<p>If not a student, civil and criminal legal actions are in order.</p>
<p>I would have hoped the OP would have sent a frantic and very well written apology to the department and professor, explaining how this happened. Then turn in the roomate.</p>
<p>Yup - murder…that would be on my list of things. This story is really serious and really sad if true.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s funny, but it’s not because I’m offended or think it shouldn’t be funny. It isn’t funny because, honestly, the professor and committee probably wouldn’t fly into a fuss over it. It’s a very obvious prank, and assuming he knows the student and thinks well of him/her generally, he’ll just assume someone was being a jerk and ask for a reprint. The committee will maybe evaluate the dissertation in a negative light, because the student didn’t even bother to look over the paper one final time before printing or look over the print-out before handing it in (I certainly would after spending all that time and effort on it), but otherwise it isn’t earth-shattering and after a simple explanation they’ll move on. If I was a professor, and one of my student’s roommates/visiting teenage siblings/whoever changed all incidents of a conjunction to “chink,” that’s what I’d do.</p>
<p>If the prank had a little more wit behind it, I’d think it was funny.</p>
<p>i was totally serious when i said that my roommate would get a tire iron to the face. minimum. possibly even a curbstomping.</p>
<p>even if your reviewing committee understood that it was a prank, they’re already going to go into reading your dissertation in a bad mood. they’re going to think you printed out your dissertation and handed it in without reading it over (which this person did). a rough examination can actually affect your career prospects. stupid little prank or not, the roommate was messing with the OP’s livelihood. and if it happened to me, the roommate would be in rough shape when i was finished.</p>
<p>I don’t really think it’s funny, either. It’s the worst kind of prank: both mean-spirited and uninspired. It’s not like the word ■■■■■■■■ counts as an attempt at outrageous or incisive humor; it’s just an ugly word used here to embarrass at least two people as much as possible.</p>
<p>I know a lot of people (including faculty) who would have been seriously perturbed, at the least, to be deep in the middle of a critical reading of student work and suddenly come across an incongruous racial slur aimed at their own ethnic group. Sure, the committee would probably have been understanding, but maybe not; even if they were, the situation probably resulted in a lot of embarrassment for everybody involved. If I were the professor in this case, I would have exonerated my own student, but I would also have added the whole thing to a long list of stupid and only half-joking slights that I would most likely have endured over a career as a minority member of a largely white profession, and I think that sucks. </p>
<p>I agree that I would have kicked it straight up the chain of command, as high as possible, and tried to get the ■■■■■■■ expelled. </p>
<p>Then again, maybe the whole story is fake. Hope so.</p>
<p>How on earth will an autocorrect correct “neither” into ■■■■■■■■■
I think it’s made up. If it’s true, the creators of the software share the blame.</p>
<p>You can define any auto-correct you want within a piece of software. In Word just go Tools -> AutoCorrect Options and at the bottom there’s an area where you can either add or remove auto-correct entries. I like to turn off auto-correct a lot since it lets me realize which words I’m misspelling without ever realizing it.</p>
<p>Oh, So it’s deliberate? Wow, that’s horrible. That’s beyond bad joke.</p>
<p>so fake. 10 char</p>