Dear Autocorrect... (Sincerely, Mathematician)

Dear Autocorrect,

No.

"Topos theory" is not the theory of tops. Or coats or shoes or hats or socks or gloves or slacks or scarves or shorts or skorts or--um, actually, what is topos theory?

Zorn’s lemma” is not a result attributed to corn. Neither boiled corn, grilled corn, frozen corn, fresh corn, canned corn, popped corn, nor unicorns. Though I'm sure one of these is equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.

Anyhoo.

No, the "fundamental groupoid" is not Justin Bieber’s most dedicated groupieOr Taylor Swift's or Bruno Mars' or Lady Gaga's or Ed Sheeran's or Miley Cyrus' or whoever sang those 'Frozen' songs, or even Beyoncé's.Sorry, Beyoncé.

The “solvability of a group” is not a measure of its solubilityOr its stretchability, scratchability, stackability, squeezability, survivability, sublimability, semipermeability or superconductability.Galois had other things on his mind.

A “monoid” is not a---wait. Why did you auto-translate "monoid" to Portuguese monóides?* Portuguese? Really? This does not help my paper sound less abstract. 

Uh... anyway.

No, the “cokernel of a homomorphism” is not its pet cockerel, pet rooster, pet chicken, pet pigeon,pet ostrich, pet flamingo, pet Angry-Bird, pet peregrine falcon, pet pterodactyl or whatever else ispecking at your subconscious.

But seriously, have I ever written a document in Portuguese? Noooo.

No, the "preimage of a map" is not the somber presage felt by a poor crumpled MTA flyer advertising that tangled web called the NYC subway system as it wisps along the tourist-infested sidewalks ofTimes Square only to be trampled on by a well-meaning teenager from Idaho. 

A "fibration between spaces" is not a vibration or a ripple in the fabric of the spacetime continuum, and therefore Einstein's spooky-action-at-a-distance is still spooky, and therefore nobody knows what dark matter really is, and therefore we can't confirm if string theory is The Solution, and therefore we still have time to think aboutthat P vs. NP problem.

A red squiggly line would have sufficed. Truly.

No, “the little cubes operad” is not an opera about the eternal bond of love enjoyed by twovery small, very teeny, very tiny, very eensy, very weensy, very itty, very bitty, veryjust-let-epsilon-be-greater-than-zero-you-know-what-I-meanPlatonic solids. 

The “pushout of a diagram” is not a summarization of its upshot, bottomline, sideline, underline,downtime, topside, low-tide, high-five, thruway, right-of-way, or its leftovers.

Honestly though, I don't even speak Portuguese.

Geometric group theorists will be miffed if you replace the handy "Bigon Criterion" for a beastly Bison Criterion.Algebraic geometers will be mortified if you mistake a "birational function" for a binational soiree.Category theorists will be baffled if you tell them a "colimit" is a way to collimate laser beams. Number theorists will be appalled if you exchange their "Dirichlet series" for a Dialect series. Algebraists will be incensed if you say "the eigenspace" is a---what?

WHY did you change “the eigenspace” to "the eigenspade?!*

AT LEAST "EIGENSPACE" IS A REAL WORD. You are NOT allowed to make up new wor—oh, oops.

Yeah, I meant "the" not “teh.”

But still - EIGENSPADE?

If you're that confused, you might as well change it to Portuguese. 

Ugh.

 

Sincnerly,

Mathematician

*true story

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