A fellow recovering journalist has reminded me of a spell checker problem that once afflicted a newspaper we worked at. Some multicultural zealot among the editing caste had programmed the computer system’s spell checker to change every use of the word “black” to the more politically-correct “African American.”
Which, naturally enough, immediately resulted in a screwup. The phrase “little black cocktail dress” in a fashion article was changed to “little African-American cocktail dress.” Fortunately, it was caught and fixed before it got into print. Still makes me chuckle.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
How can you fix it if it keeps changing it automatically?
Just kidding.
You can get in to some embarrassing situations like that. I once wrote an operating procedure at Dow. At some point, I got tired of messing with it and put in the phrase, “Do it because I said so. You don’t need a reason.” I left it in there, just to see what would happen. That phrase made it through three supervisor reviews.
Scary.
jd
Beats me. I didn’t have the authority to mess with one of those programs.
Other papers I worked at had “genius” editors who, periodically, would announce that using such-and-such a word was henceforth banned. Because they didn’t like it. “Kids” as a synonym for “children” is one I remember. Kids, you see, are goats. Or something.
But those guys were smart enough not to mess with the spell checker to eliminate the usages.
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This sure gives political correctness an African-American eye.
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