The Victims of Word Processing

I grew up largely on paper and pencil. But, I’ve got so accustomed to the Japanese word processing that I can not write down Kanji characters correctly as much as I wish or cound do ten years ago. Since, for a given pronunciation, it gives you a set of possible Kanji characters for you to choose, it takes away your burden of memorizing all the strokes that comprise a given Kanji character. Some smart word processor even has the personalization feature and shows you the list of characters in order of (past) usage frequencies. At the age of 42, I have to admit that I am one of those victims of word processor.

Yet, I couldn’t believe my eyes at this in-store ad in one mobile phone store in Tokyo the other day. Not because it offered the discount for the very first 20 units. No. no. no. But, surprised that the in-store ad got the Kanji for DISCONTS wrong! The first character should be 値 (price) instead of 植 (plant), which even I, or my daughter in grade 2 soon, can tell. Obviously the guy or the gal who created this ad would be a more severe victim.
2005-12-19 02:44:12

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