Check it out: seeing red for right reasons

● Red is the colour of love, but not when spellcheck uses it to tell you your name is spelt incorrectly.

Readers will have noticed that some names in today’s edition are underlined in red. This is to highlight the #right- myname campaign by Nando’s and the Sunday Times.

Names like Xolani, Brendt, Marieke and Liesl are underlined in red every time they’re typed into a document. To right this wrong, two of South Africa’s strongest brands are teaming up.

The #rightmyname campaign encourages South Africans to go online and register their names on www.rightmyname.co.za as soon as possible. The website promises that on March 21 this year — Human Rights Day — South Africans will “be able to update your spellcheck dictionary and get rid of the red line beneath your name — and the names of all your friends and family too”.

Chief marketing officer at Nando’s, Doug Place, said: “At Nando’s, we’ve always loved celebrating South Africa’s diversity. So when we noticed that after more than 30 years, spellcheck still highlights Nando’s as a mistake, it got us thinking.

“What about other names in South Africa? Names like Nokuthula, Elodie, Darawees and Tebatso. Why are their names highlighted as mistakes too? Not cool.”

Sunday Times editor Bongani Siqoko is affected by spellcheck discrimination, and believes enough is enough. “I’m looking forward to a day when the e-mails I send and receive are no longer tarnished by that red squiggle. There is so much squiggling one can tolerate on a screen, before seeing red.”