It being the silly season the papers are full of stories about bloopers and blunders and daft goings-on. Twas ever thus, so I might as well join in.

I must thank PrintWeek's deputy head of production Laura McClennon for drawing my attention to a story in this morning's Metro newspaper, which exposes a new variant on the dreaded blame game that is the 'printing error' (see many blogs passim).

Kirklees council has recalled a batch of 7,000 leaflets promoting various cycle routes and related activities in the area, because of an array of errors apparently introduced due to an 'unanticipated automatic spellcheck" carried out - you guessed it - by the printer. I'm particularly impressed by what this inadvertent spellcheck did to the British Waterways email address for general enquiries, subverting it to enquiries.manic-depressive@brutalisation's.co.uk.

Whether or not this blunder is the hapless printer's fault or not, I can't imagine that automatic spellcheck-related amendments would form a deliberate part of anyone's pre-flighting system, for that way danger most definitely lies.

Automation does not always involve intelligence. I am reminded of an incident when former Sun Chemical Europe boss David Meldram became 'David Melodrama' thanks to a spellcheck-induced correction. Someone also sent me a somewhat confusing message recently involving a 'deformed offer' where the intention was merely to abbreviate definitely to defo. Good old predictive texting, eh? My phone also insists that when I type ham I am more likely to require IBM for some reason, too.

Feel free to share your own examples, anonymity guaranteed to protect the culpable.