4 ms·

Regarding the last point specifically, there is an established texting convention. Say you you (or autocorrect) have made a mistake and typed word A and you hav

Regarding the last point specifically, there is an established texting convention. Say you you (or autocorrect) have made a mistake and typed word A and you have already sent the message, but really you meant word B. Then, if you notice this mistake (granted, if), it is common convention to simply reply “*B”. Then, when the recipient reads to the mistaken word A and wonders why the word A seems out of place, they can look at the subsequent message and substitute B for A, without you even having to explicitly designate which word you made a mistake in (this is still sometimes necessary, but rarely).

thomasahle 6y ago
I haven't seen that convention used. Not that it's any bad. Personally I use /s/old/new which also had the benefit of some platforms, like slack, automatically fixing the original message.
- randallsquared 6y ago
  Wait, what? I've used that, but I don't think I've ever seen Slack fix the original!
  - thomasahle 6y ago
    Yeah, it's not really documented, so I was quite surprised when it first happened. They talk about it here though: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/505178492431269888 https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/505178492431269888
    - lordgrenville 6y ago
      Slack has some surprising, hard to discover UI tricks. Another one I learned recently is you can make text into a hyperlink by copying a URL to your clipboard, highlighting the text in Slack, and pasting. https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/1240387882507997186 https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/1240387882507997186
      - mercer 6y ago
        Ha, cool trick! Reminds me of the Trello trick where if you press the 'copy' keyboard shortcut while hovering over a card, it will copy a link to that specific card.
    - mercer 6y ago
      that's an awesome trick. Thanks!
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    Requires a leading /. Discord does this too, but without that requirement.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I've seen *correction used extensively among my non-technical peers, the sed syntax is more common across technical ones.
- Agentlien 6y ago
  My friends and I have used this convention for IM apps since 2003. I haven't seen anyone do it for SMS, though.
- kohtatsu 6y ago
  sed-style works in discord too without the leading / s/search/replace Bothers me that it won't trim a trailing / tho. FWIW it's usually faster just to press up (another shortcut to edit the last message) and word jump to fix. Also FWIW I've always seen the asterisk apended. “appended*”
aaron695 6y ago
Why can't you edit sent messages? Why have we accepted this reality? That's what's truly bizarre.
- hoseja 6y ago
  Because it brings more problems than solutions.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    Like what? Slack can do it, what are they so special? I guess maybe in a fluent back and forward it might slow people a little worrying about things they shouldn't. But this is not my experience. This inability seems the IT industry at it's worse. It's like some Frankenstein putting immutability onto human beings.
    - scbrg 6y ago
      > This inability seems the IT industry at it's worse. It's like some Frankenstein putting immutability onto human beings. I don't understand. Communication has historically not been possible to "edit". There's nothing inhuman about that. If I say something, I've said it. Of course I can later make a correction, but the words I said remain said. The same has been true for the thousands of years we've had written communication, until a few years ago (on some platforms). Personally, I find editing messages a misfeature. There's few things more annoying than replying to a message, and then finding out that the message you're replying to has been replaced by another one. If a platform has this feature, it makes me less likely to use it.
      - mercer 6y ago
        While I do agree, I find that marking a message as 'edited' (like Telegram does) makes it less of a problem for me. Bonus points if I can click to see the original message!
      - aaron695 6y ago
        No, we have always been able to edit communication until the internet, because conversations/everything has always been unrecorded or very hard to access the archives of. Have you never had an argument get to 'you said this', 'no I did not' ? We even edit our own messaging in our heads. We make mistakes, why can't we correct them? (We are talking autocomplete of spelling and grammar here at the original level) And since obviously your end can have a setting/hack/default to keep the original anyway I'm not sure what the fear is.
bagacrap 6y ago
I see and use "B" as a correction instead of "B". It's very annoying when I'm correcting autocorrect, ie B automatically changed to A, because then in the follow up message it usually changes it again, so I end up with A*.
- OceanKing 6y ago
  That’s why you put the asterisk first - that way, autocorrect doesn’t correct the word after it (at least for me)

thomasahle 6y ago

I haven't seen that convention used. Not that it's any bad. Personally I use /s/old/new which also had the benefit of some platforms, like slack, automatically fixing the original message.

randallsquared 6y ago
Wait, what? I've used that, but I don't think I've ever seen Slack fix the original!
- thomasahle 6y ago
  Yeah, it's not really documented, so I was quite surprised when it first happened. They talk about it here though: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/505178492431269888 https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/505178492431269888
  - lordgrenville 6y ago
    Slack has some surprising, hard to discover UI tricks. Another one I learned recently is you can make text into a hyperlink by copying a URL to your clipboard, highlighting the text in Slack, and pasting. https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/1240387882507997186 https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/1240387882507997186
    - mercer 6y ago
      Ha, cool trick! Reminds me of the Trello trick where if you press the 'copy' keyboard shortcut while hovering over a card, it will copy a link to that specific card.
  - mercer 6y ago
    that's an awesome trick. Thanks!
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  Requires a leading /. Discord does this too, but without that requirement.
StavrosK 6y ago
I've seen *correction used extensively among my non-technical peers, the sed syntax is more common across technical ones.
Agentlien 6y ago
My friends and I have used this convention for IM apps since 2003. I haven't seen anyone do it for SMS, though.
kohtatsu 6y ago
sed-style works in discord too without the leading / s/search/replace Bothers me that it won't trim a trailing / tho. FWIW it's usually faster just to press up (another shortcut to edit the last message) and word jump to fix. Also FWIW I've always seen the asterisk apended. “appended*”

aaron695 6y ago

Why can't you edit sent messages? Why have we accepted this reality? That's what's truly bizarre.

hoseja 6y ago
Because it brings more problems than solutions.
- aaron695 6y ago
  Like what? Slack can do it, what are they so special? I guess maybe in a fluent back and forward it might slow people a little worrying about things they shouldn't. But this is not my experience. This inability seems the IT industry at it's worse. It's like some Frankenstein putting immutability onto human beings.
  - scbrg 6y ago
    > This inability seems the IT industry at it's worse. It's like some Frankenstein putting immutability onto human beings. I don't understand. Communication has historically not been possible to "edit". There's nothing inhuman about that. If I say something, I've said it. Of course I can later make a correction, but the words I said remain said. The same has been true for the thousands of years we've had written communication, until a few years ago (on some platforms). Personally, I find editing messages a misfeature. There's few things more annoying than replying to a message, and then finding out that the message you're replying to has been replaced by another one. If a platform has this feature, it makes me less likely to use it.
    - mercer 6y ago
      While I do agree, I find that marking a message as 'edited' (like Telegram does) makes it less of a problem for me. Bonus points if I can click to see the original message!
    - aaron695 6y ago
      No, we have always been able to edit communication until the internet, because conversations/everything has always been unrecorded or very hard to access the archives of. Have you never had an argument get to 'you said this', 'no I did not' ? We even edit our own messaging in our heads. We make mistakes, why can't we correct them? (We are talking autocomplete of spelling and grammar here at the original level) And since obviously your end can have a setting/hack/default to keep the original anyway I'm not sure what the fear is.

bagacrap 6y ago

I see and use "B" as a correction instead of "B". It's very annoying when I'm correcting autocorrect, ie B automatically changed to A, because then in the follow up message it usually changes it again, so I end up with A*.

OceanKing 6y ago
That’s why you put the asterisk first - that way, autocorrect doesn’t correct the word after it (at least for me)