Be honest now: tell me if you think this is a little, well, odd.

So I’m spell-checking the latest version of our Fall catalog from within Adobe InDesign—my favorite DTP tool since version 1.5, because the people at Quark are pig-nosed ass-brained dorkmasters of the purest ray serene—when the word “fettucine” gets flagged.

I’m used to a lot of words I use in our catalog not existing in the standard InDesign dictionary; Lentinula, Ganoderma, mycoremediation, et cetera. Just par for the course when you work for a mycologist. But fettucine? I double-checked the spelling online and everything seemed kosher. (Kosher fettucine? Guess it’s not for pasta carbonara then.) So I added it to the custom dictionary with all the other weird words I use every day.

But that’s not the odd part.

The odd part came when, searching its internal database of words for an acceptable alternative, it suggested “feticide”.

Had to bang my head on the desk a few times to get my brain to pivot back right-way ’round after that. If you’re wondering why, try rolling the phrase, “Feticide Alfredo” around on your tongue for a while. 😯