Books without swear words - there's an app for that

[eschwartz]

Parents are absolutely allowed to raise their kids however they see fit. I simply believe that any parents who feel the need for this app have far worse problems than their kids reading naughty words.

Also I take insult at the idea that in a practical sense this can be implemented. Most every word that constitutes swearing also has a perfectly acceptable usage -- the kind of usage that nobody would even blink at, but a dump program (GIGO) will not distinguish and will change the meaning in wildly-confusing ways.

[pendragginp]

I simply believe that any parents who feel the need for this app have far worse problems than their kids reading naughty words.

Well, I guess that's a prejudice anyone is allowed to cherish, but it's a blanket statement based on no evidence whatsoever. Of course, that's the meaning of prejudice -
pre-judgement. Shrug. Have at 'er.

[meeera]

Has someone run a Bible through this? "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater darnation." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be darned."

"A jerk shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD" "But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye jerks, and not sons. "

"And I have oxen, and butts, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. " "s soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away, they and their butts."

" The wicked shall be turned into heck, and all the nations that forget God. "

And the whole New Testament is going to be all... "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord geez, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of geez from the dead, "

And then there's: "But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be groins in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. " and "And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the groins. "

(Wordlist from http://www.romancenovelnews.com/joom...ence&Itemid=53. Which also notes: "Interestingly, the following words are not considered profane: squirt, spurt, orgasm, goddamnit, horniness, semen, suck, condom, manhood, clit, nipple, Good Lord, God, erotic, half-assed, naked, sensual and sexual. ".)

[meeera]

And then there's Shakespeare: "If you groin us, do we not bleed?"

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pendragginp

Wow, this sure brought out a lot of holier-than-thous from the woodwork! I have no problem with other parents raising their children as they see fit, and I'm not going to sit around and act like they're soooo stupid and I'm soooo much smarter and better.

I read to my children all the time, and I expurgated certain words from the books I read them. I'm not going to use the 'n' word about Jim, for instance, when I read them Huck Finn. I AM going to explain the history of this word and why we don't use it.

Same thing with To Kill A Mockingbird when I read it to them. Scout does swear a bit, and since I didn't want them to think I was okay with my children swearing, I just left out some of those words or changed them. Sue me.

Yes--which, as a parent, was your rightful choice to make. You made it in context, and as a part of the discussion--not as an absentee landlord letting an app make the decision for you, to alleviate you of the responsibility. That's my gripe. I do think the whole argument over "cursing" assumes that the hearer is infantile; but I respect that every parent has the right to make that choice for their kids. It's the abandonment of the intelligent choice that I'm not cheery about.

There are a lot of books that have a lot of value in them, and it doesn't lie in the fact that they contain profanity. Losing that bit rarely hurts the book, and if cutting it out will make an otherwise valuable book available to children - well, obviously that was the route I chose.

And as for getting all up in the air about 'changing something someone wrote' - what, pray tell, does every adaptation and abridgment do? That's a specious argument; changing books happens all the time. I get far more upset about going to see a movie made from a book and finding that basically all that has been retained is the title and the poor author's name.

Live and let live, folks. Live and let live.

Abridgements and adaptations are licensed. They're not created from the original works without the author's consent or payment thereto. Not all works have been abridged, condensed, chopped, sliced or served, for this very reason. And yes, lots of books get optioned, and made into vapid movies, sadly. But that too--at least the author is compensated for the pain. When my clients sell their options, no matter how much they know that they'll be unhappy with the results down the road--at least they've put real money in their pocket now. Suzie Censor and her white-out likely isn't doing that. I doubt she's even asking permission--much less paying for the privilege of censoring the reading material that, by and large, she's decided her kids can hear. For that matter, I'd still mind less if she did that, then use an auto-magic censorship app.

It's this kind of bullcrap that's resulted in almost no viable adult--by which I mean, simply grown-up--entertainment in the past two decades. Now everything is Disney-fied, so that it doesn't break the PG barrier, and we have pablum.

Hitch

[DiapDealer]

To the parents who read a lot growing up and think this app makes sense: how did you manage to grow up into a concerned, loving and responsible parent without it? Do you really believe it was just blind chance/luck?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pendragginp

Well, I guess that's a prejudice anyone is allowed to cherish, but it's a blanket statement based on no evidence whatsoever. Of course, that's the meaning of prejudice -
pre-judgement. Shrug. Have at 'er.

As Hitch said -- absentee landlords. You cannot fix parental neglect with an app.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by meeera

Has someone run a Bible through this? "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater darnation." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be darned."

[...]

Then too, as the blogger pointed out, are the naughty chickens breasts (who are these inappropriate men anyway? ) and half of historical-anything novels with their *illegitimate children* down the drain.

[pendragginp]

In the first place, you're still assuming all kinds of bad things about a parent who may want to use this, including 'neglect'. There's no basis for that assumption at all. In fact, using an app like this can be could be another way for a parent to express his protection of his children from things he would consider harmful to them, while still expanding their exposure to books he might not otherwise be comfortable allowing them to read.

In the second place I'm just astonished at the amount of scorn and bad intentions being heaped upon people who just don't like swearing in books. An awful lot of heat is being generated here, and for very little reason. We really don't need to control everyone, and it isn't a judgement on us if we think differently - so let's let them think differently too.

What I'm objecting to here is the lack of live and let live, and the assumptions of all kinds of bad things about people we don't even know. It's the opposite of liberal.

Methinks.

[JSWolf]

The way I look at it is if a parent needs this app to protect his/her child, then that parent is nt doing a good job in terms of what the child is reading.

And there are lots of books where this app would change the meaning f something so it's silly or just lain wrong and the child would get an incorrect meaning from the book given the mistakes this app can make.

If you are going to allow your kid(s) to read a book with inappropriate words, read the book first and discuss it with your kid(s). Or read it to your kid(s) and do the modifying of the words yourself so the meaning is kept and the words not changed too much to be incorrect or inappropriate.

However, trust works very well. If I ever read a book that an app like that has changed and I found out about it, I would be very upset because to me it would feel like my parents do not trust me. And that's more damaging than the original words in the book.

[GA Russell]

Everyone is discussing the reader who is a child.

What about me? I don't want to read four-letter words either.

My favorite author is Dashiell Hammett. He was able to perfect the hard-boiled detective story with printing swear words.

However, if I wrote the app, I would not change the offensive word. I would do what Hammett did - print the first letter of the word and follow it with a long dash.

[meeera]

I let my preteen read whatever the hell he wants, unbastardised, short of the books that he is legally banned from buying in a shop. And I'm very comfortable with that decision. From a practical point of view, most books with large amounts of strong swear words have subject matter that is simply not of interest to him anyway.

He's certainly not going to learn anything new - we've long since discussed swearing, he knows all the swear words and their literal meanings, and he typically uses them appropriately and rarely. And there isn't anything in books that he won't hear around the traps at school! If we'd approached the issue with a "Taboo! Taboo!" angle, I suspect he'd be more interested in rebelling for rebellion's sake.

I read anything and everything at his age, far broader than he does, and I really think it did not do me any harm. I love that my parents trusted me to choose my own reading and let me pull from their shelves and from anywhere in the library, even where other adults may have thought I was reading "inappropriate" things.

[JSWolf]

Sometimes, the more parents say no, the more kids want and when they get, they can very easily go overboard.

During my childhood, my parents had all of their alcohol where I could very easy get at it and drink if I wanted. They never said no you cannot in such a way that made me want to have it. I grew up in a household that didn't drink much. So as a consequence, when I turned 18 and legally able to drink alcohol, I didn't do anything silly and go get drunk. I didn't drink because I could. I grew up around it and to me, it was nothing special.

Again, it's about trust. My sister and I were trusted. Parents that have to censor books like that do not trust their children. It's that simple.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

However, if I wrote the app, I would not change the offensive word. I would do what Hammett did - print the first letter of the word and follow it with a long dash.

Which reminds me of an old joke from Hamburg, Germany, in which Little Erna, the heroine of lots of jokes from Hamburg, is telling her mother that she isn't going to play with her friend Fritz anymore, because he knows so many dirty songs. Does he sing them? the mother asks. No, answers Erna, he whistles them.

Originally Posted by meeera

I love that my parents trusted me to choose my own reading and let me pull from their shelves and from anywhere in the library, even where other adults may have thought I was reading "inappropriate" things.

I can't get too worked up about the app though. If you look at the way the censored words are blocked on the screen, it will only get kids interested in finding out what is blocked. Nothing better if you want to nurture inquisitive minds.

Now I'll get back to reading my favourite SciFi author, Philip K. Johnson.

[Barty]

I've had it with these monkey flying censoring apps on this monkey flying phone.