Posted on 03/02/2006 3:05:17 PM PST by megimmie
Spell-checking on his computer is never going to be the same for Santa Cruz solo practitioner Arthur Dudley.
In an opening brief to San Francisco's 1st District Court of Appeal, a search-and-replace command by Dudley inexplicably inserted the words "sea sponge" instead of the legal term "sua sponte," which is Latin for "on its own motion."
"Spell check did not have sua sponte in it," said Dudley, who, not noticing the error, shipped the brief to court.
That left the justices reading -- and probably laughing at -- such classic statements as: "An appropriate instruction limiting the judge's criminal liability in such a prosecution must be given sea sponge explaining that certain acts or omissions by themselves are not sufficient to support a conviction."
And: "It is well settled that a trial court must instruct sea sponge on any defense, including a mistake of fact defense."
The sneaky "sea sponge" popped up at least five times.
Dudley said he didn't notice the mistake in People v. Danser, A107853, until his client -- William Danser, a former Santa Clara County Superior Court judge seeking reversal of his conviction for fixing traffic tickets -- called for an explanation.
Dudley corrected the error in his reply brief, telling the court that a "glitch" caused the weird wording and instructing that "where the phrase 'sea sponge' is found, this court should insert the phrase 'sua sponte.'"
The faux pas has made Dudley the butt of some mild ribbing around Santa Cruz. Local attorneys, he said, have started calling his unique defense the "sea sponge duty to instruct."
Spell check don't fix stupid.
The spell-checker in WordPerfect 5.x (I believe), when it came across the word "Unisys" in a document, would suggest "anuses" as a replacement for the offending, unrecognized word.
Apparently somebody at WordPerfect Corp. didn't think too highly of that particular company and expressed their opinion in code.
That, and this post, are two reasons why I don't rely (or trust) spell-checkers. Read for content, boys and girls. And thanks, I needed the laugh.
Do what I do and memorize everything you see. On the rare occasion I don't know or cannot recall, I head over to dictionary.com
Pinging my favorite attorneys!
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
you're welcome :) i saw this posted on instapundit. i figured FR could use a few chuckles.
I used to get a kick out of what showed up whenever the word "Volvo" was flagged...
LOL! That's grate!
We had a very bad spell checker at the copy desk where I worked. We were not allowed to add words to it. Every time a certain priest's name came up, mostly as officiating at funerals, the spell check would suggest "testicular." We had to be very careful.
Then didn't bother to watch what was going on and have a fence described as liening against a tree.
So9
It would be useful if spell-checkers had the ability to easily enable and disable certain parts of their vocabulary. If someone is writing about vehicles, "double axel" is probably a mistake. But if writing about skating, "double axle" would be just as wrong.
how nice of you to ping me, sua sponte like!
Maybe he wasn't sponge worthy.
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