If you ever find the need to protect your or your kid’s eyes from cuss words while diving into an eBook, there’s a new app to do just that. Dubbed Clean Reader, it scans the content you’re about to peruse and hides from view all kinds of profanities. On second thought, we don’t know why you’d want to hand a child any bit of literature which needs to be checked for offensive words.
The application mentioned above features three settings called Clean, Cleaner and Squeaky Clean. These names are obviously meant to represent the degree of censorship applicable in each case. The proper choice can be made depending on how squeamish the user is when it comes to reading content with swear words in it. But quite frankly, we don’t know why you’d want it.
Because while there are plenty of arguments in favor of censoring offensive advertisements, movies and what not, the same cannot be said for literature (speaking strictly in terms of cuss words). Unlike ads or movie trailers, you’ll rarely find a book being forced down your throat. The might of the pen to carve out the right words, is all the author has at his disposal.
Sometimes, a swear word uttered with a carefully picked punctuation may be the only way to capture the mood in a written work. If you’re at or above the ‘legal age’ of being able to deal with profanity, and still choose to go with the Clean Reader app, you probably shouldn’t be reading the material in the first place. As if the concerned author hasn’t been put through it by the editor already!
Clean Reader is available through Google Play Store and Apple iTunes. Since it’s free and clearly needed a lot of hard work to be built, it may not be right to criticize it further. It doesn’t contain ads and you can buy books from within the app.