A Most Curious Text

A Most Curious Text

I have a bunch of relatives that live down South.  Many of them live in M i crooked letter crooked letter i crooked letter crooked letter i humpback humpback i. At least that is how I was taught to spell Mississippi by my cousin Christy when she was around 5 years old.

Christy’s sister Tammy is one of those Mississippians.  When she was young, she lived in Ohio, then moved to Mississippi.  She went to college in Georgia and…wait…what’s that?  Did I hear someone say “fascinating, tell me more ” (If you don’t recognize that little squiggle, check out my post from 1/14/20 ).

Well, I am going through Tammy’s history because I am trying to figure out where and when she learned French.  Have I heard her speak French? No.  Did she write me an email in French? She didn’t do that either.  So, what evidence do I have that she knows French?  I offer the following text she sent after she read the last post, the one about the mathematical exploits of her uncle.

Do you notice anything about her text?  Anything unusual at all?  I did.  It appears to be written by a French person or someone who knows how the French like to punctuate their sentences.  See the extra space between “that” and the question mark?  That is the giveaway.  It is one of those things that strikes Americans as unusual.  It just doesn’t look right.

Speaking of punctuation that does not sit well, I have a friend who insists on punctuating her texts in the British style.  Any and all quotation marks are inside of all punctuation.  She does this even though I am reasonably sure she has not been further east than Ohio.  It is just one of those things.  That said, I do believe that Tammy’s text is unique in my experience, I can not recall ever getting a message with French punctuation.

So, I had to do some research to get to the bottom of this.  It didn’t take me long to discover that autocorrect has been known to add an extra space before punctuation.  In fact, I read that many people have noticed this and are not fans of this quirk.  I have never been a fan of autocorrect, it sometimes has a mind of its own and that intelligence doesn’t necessarily mesh with mine.

There is another possibility, the predictive text function that shows up when texting.  If you choose a word from the available selections, the program puts a space after it.  It requires a little extra work to get rid of it, and I stand with those who can’t be bothered by such nonsense.

This is the end of this short post about a text Tammy sent me.  Do I think that she knows French, or is the extra space a function of her texting app?  The fiction writer in me wants to believe that she is a spy, planted here by the French government at a very young age for some nefarious purpose.  The scientist in me…well, who cares what that guy thinks, the spy theory makes for a much better story.