An Open Letter

26 March 2007 By L.R. 4 In Life With LR

Dear Software Developers & Programmers of Hewlett-Packard:

The other day I was merrily resizing a few pictures in HP Photosmart Edit, which is the only photo editing software I have, and which came with my combo printer/scanner/copier.  Just for kicks, not that I really needed to do anything but resize my pictures, I explored the program to see just how much editing it could do.  I found the following options:  Sharpen Edges and Smoothen Textures.

Smoothen?

I will admit that, even though I have a degree in English, there are quite a lot of words that I don’t know.  But the forms of the verb smooth, which context compells me to infer you mean, are not among them.  It is very easy to see how this error was made.  Your programmer obviously got confused by making the adjective sharp into a verb by adding an en and assumed that smooth worked the same way.  This, unfortunately, is not so.  Smooth can be an adjective, but it can also be a verb.   There is no en involved.  Ever.

Although, I have sung a song before that used the archaic phrase, “The angels sungen, the shepherds, too.”  Perhaps the people responsible for this software operate by some obsolete grammar?

I suggest you integrate a spell-checker into HP Photosmart Edit.

Sincerely,

LR Burt,

Amused (And Ever So Slightly Annoyed) Customer

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4 Comments on "An Open Letter"

  1. Annie
    26/03/2007 at 7:09 pm Permalink

    Send in your story to Lynne Truss for the sequel to “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”. Isn’t it satisfying to shred?

  2. L.R.
    26/03/2007 at 9:08 pm Permalink

    You know, someone else was talking about Eats the other day. I really need to re-read that, because it’s so darn funny.

  3. AngelaM
    27/03/2007 at 8:26 am Permalink

    I have a picture book version of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves that I use in my classroom. The book is subtitled “Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!” and has one sentence punctuated two different ways on facing pages, each illustrated according to its meaning. The book really shows the kids how commas can alter sentence meaning i.e. “‘The student,’ said the teacher, ‘is crazy,’” versus “The student said the teacher is crazy.”

  4. L.R.
    27/03/2007 at 3:08 pm Permalink

    I didn’t know there was a kids’ version! Sounds really cute and like a good learning tool.

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