Over the weekend I was toiling away at yet another of those turgid and insightless foreign policy papers I occasionally have to edit.
It was a more than usually whingey one (and the ones on Sino-US relations are usually very whingey indeed), its basic thesis - so far as you could discern one at all - being, "That Obama, he acts all nice and friendly and says 'China's rise is a good thing' - but then he goes and meets with the Dalai Lama! It's SO UNFAIR!!"
I joked to a friend on Sunday evening that as my author worked himself up into a lather of self-pity and wounded pride at the climax of his paper, I had pictured him weeping tears of impotent rage on to his manuscript. In fact, I had wanted to add tearstains for him - to highlight the emotion of the passage. It seemed so appropriate.
But then I realised, of course, that Microsoft Word doesn't provide any facility for you to do that. Why not? How hard can it be??
I immediately began working on an add-on program for Word that allows you to customise your text documents in various cute ways that make them look more like the paper copies we all grew up with. I imagine the Coffee Mug Ring will be the most frequently used option. Although Dog-Ear might also prove quite popular, I think. And Whiskey Spill and Cigarette Ash Smudge may be favoured by more 'serious' writers. I'll also include a Half-Consumed By Fire option for those really angstful types who toss their manuscript on the grate in moments of despair and almost immediately repent of it. Naturally, there'll be a Dog Ate My Homework feature for high school and college students who want to skimp on their assignments. And, of course, the Tear Stains effect for over-emotional Chinese academics.
Any other suggestions?
Unfortunately, since I'll have to spend quite a bit of time learning programming languages, I imagine it will be at least three years before I can bring this to market. I hope someone else doesn't get in on the idea first!
3 comments:
The one which immediately suggested itself to me should probably be nameless. I'll say only that it should be used with care -- probably only on anonymous fan letters to porn stars and their ilk.
IF you can come up with suitably, um, unmistakable photographic or artistic representations of these effects, I think you might find the Word feature you want in what are called, conveniently, watermarks. Normally, you use these to imprint the background of a page with a translucent-gray headline like "DRAFT" or "CONFIDENTIAL" or "EYES ONLY" or whatever. But the facility would lend itself just as easily to dried-salty-water splash marks. Funny thing would be, in this case, it's such an odd feature that the recipient might not know how to get rid of it!
I'm not in Windows at the moment so can't walk you through the steps to do it, but, hmm... Yes. Here y'go: Microsoft's own online instructions for how to do it (in Word 2007, anyway).
Although the feature's been around for a while, I don't think anyone else has been clever enough to use it emotionalize a document's contents. So your business model may just need some tweaking. Maybe bundle the appropriate images into a commercial set of Word templates.
And then there'd be the related idea: doing the same thing for Web pages. Especially since these sorts of nuances are only inadequately expressed with emoticons.
Ah, I knew I could rely on you for a technical appraisal, JES.
I didn't bother to rummage around on the Internet before rushing to print with my latest brainwave. I expect somebody probably already has, or soon will have, produced such a gizmo for Wordpress blogs.
The Face Plant might be another nice addition from the head-banging seen for the more violently prone types. Though I don't know how you could get the face to look like the person writing the paper. Perhaps there could be a few generic options; for men: bearded, moustached, clean-shaven. Women would be a little easier, just a touch of lipstick, perhaps, to add some color.
Although, this has got me thinking about the Shroud of Turin and perhaps the Face Plant is too creepy for public consumption.
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