Spellchecker Gaffes Add Sparkle to Serious Stories

The so-called Cupertino effect has been creeping into major US newspapers and government reports, at times adding unintended humor to serious stories, BoingBoing reports. The effect—named after Microsoft Word 97's habit of replacing "co-operation" with "Cupertino" in its spellchecker—has slipped spell-checker-related gaffes into Reuters and the New York Times. Among the mistakes:

• A NATO report that referred to the "Organization for Security and Cupertino in Europe"
• A Reuters story that turned Pakistan's Muttahida Quami movement into a "Quail movement"
• Repeated references in a New York Times article to Stephen Colbert's "trustiness," not "truthiness"

For more spellchecker errors, click on the WorldWideWords links below.
(More Microsoft stories.)