On the topic of self-made autocorrect mistakes, I believe a good term for that would be "distextia." I have fallen victim to my own finger mis-manipulations in writing on a computer keyboard. I enjoy the show and hope you keep it up for a long time.
Marion Schafer
Autocorrect mistakes abound, but have you ever made the errors yourself, such as typing the word buy when you meant by? Studies in Computer Mediated Communications have linked this phenomenon to the way we process words phonetically before typing them out.
I"ve had a couple of particular typing errors that I"ve made consistently for as long as I can remember: typing form in place of from, and maching instead of machine. It"s been obvious to me from quite early on that the error in each case comes from my motor neurons accessing a sequence of typing movements that are more common overall.
Oh, I like "distextia." I do that a lot myself. (::trying to remember some examples:: Also if there"s an "-in"+one letter near the end of the word, my hands/brain want to turn it into something with "-ing" at the end, which I think has more to do with habit than going through the speech center, for me.
Bugs: There are many orders of insects; true bugs fall into just one: Hemiptera. (Yes, that"s "half wing.")
http://tolweb.org/Hemiptera/8239
They tend to have cute little triangle or shield shapes on their backs. The order includes stink bugs, box elder bugs (which my parents call democrats--why is that?), water striders, and those dangerously lovely assassin bugs. And yes, for you gardeners, squash bugs--ugh! It also includes the suborder Homoptera (aphids, cicadas, leafhoopers), which I learned as a separate order. I"m still coming to terms with that. (heh)
I taught my children to be unfashionably correct (and correcting of others) about lightning beetles--they are not bugs nor flies. (Beetle order Choleoptera=hard wing). "Now, we have to be nice to people who use these other common names. It"s not their fault." Heh. Nah, I still am fascinated by the variety of names we call all those little critters, some of them indicating some history or old beliefs or observation.
I started learning about the various orders when doing an insect collection as an extra credit project for biology class in high school; that"s when my science geek came to life & rose up to meet my nomenclature-loving word nerd! (I can get lost among the scientific names at the Tree of Life website.)
Anyway, if we didn"t accept the plethora of common names, we couldn"t enjoy Eric Carle"s book:
http://www.amazon.com/Very-Lonely-Firefly-Eric-Carle/dp/0399227741
though The Very Quiet Cricket was our favorite.
Another insect-related picture book for kids? (Great for girls!)
http://www.amazon.com/Insects-Are-Life-Orchard-Paperbacks/dp/053107093X
(followed by the sequel Reptiles are my Life)
Re: Manual auto-incorrect:
I like "distextia" for the simple transposition of letters to make a different valid word that the one you meant to type, but a colleague of mine and I were discussing the even deeper concept of typing something that "sounds" similar, but is a completely different word or even concept. I started describing to him my fingers "muscle memory macros", but I think I just like "muscle macros" even better.
The example of the really deep seated (and deeply geeky) one that sparked that conversation:
I was emailing someone to ask them "can you find the name of that restaurant where you wanted me to make reservations" and I began to type "can you find . -name ..." oops. That might only be funny unix command-line nerds, but it had me snickering long after I'd sent off the (corrected) email.