Autocorrect failures are a great source of internet schadenfreude, but they typically come at the expense of a texter's mental anguish for having tapped send one second too soon. According to a new Apple patent, the iPhone maker is looking into a way to notify a text recipient of any words that underwent autocorrect in the typing process. The patent was first picked up by AppleInsider today.

The patent, which can be found here, describes a system for showing recipients highlighted words that were altered by autocorrect. The system wouldn't show the person what you originally typed, but it could alleviate having to ask follow-up questions for clarification if the word is similar enough to a more obvious alternative, like "being" to "bring" or "order" to "offer."

Apple patent shows system for highlighting autocorrected words

These small annoyances don't tend to bring conversations to a halt, but they do add unnecessary exchanges with one party trying to clarify what the other meant to say. The tweak looks like it's based on the same highlighting feature Apple uses for iOS voice dictation, which underlines words in blue that the software was not 100 percent certain about. Whether this feature ever makes its way into iOS is unclear, but we'll see when Apple take the wraps off iOS 10 this June at its annual WWDC gathering.