[ADS-L] More surprising censorshi p

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 11, 2007, at 8:05 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> Surely this ["may c**k their collective heads in dismay"] is just a
> joke.

not necessarily.  when i looked at the iTunes automatic asterisking
scheme a year ago, *all* occurrences of "cock" (in song and album
titles) were translated to "c**k", and automatic asterisking turns up
on other websites.

in fact i reported on one such case (not involving iTunes) here:

   AZ, 6/4/07: Annals of automated avoidance:
   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004570.html

(a posting about "two especially striking examples of automated
avoidance: "hen and ****" on the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds site (asterisking courtesy of Microsoft), and automatic
rejection of "XX" (as in the Roman numeral for '20') in Yahoo groups")

i got the RSPB example from Larry Urdang, who posted about it right
here on ADS-L.

arnold

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