The width of a window: a rant.

Computers have made writing easier in lots of ways - hitting the backspace key, for instance, is a thousand times quicker than rolling the paper part of the way out of the typewriter, putting a shield over the carbon paper, using a typewriter rubber on both copies, and then lining everything back up again - but computers are still full of traps, all the same.

There are those worrying little red squiggles that suggest a word is spelled wrongly (colour, realise, plough, maumet, and granodiorite all bring out the red squiggles); and then there's the lovely cupertino effect, where your phone turns a simple reference to the Pakistani political party Muttahida Quami, to something possibly more likely but really quite embarrassing:

The opposition blames the government and the pro-government Muttonhead Quail Movement (MQM), which runs Karachi, for the violence.

(That particular cupertino trick was played on the news agency Reuters.)

And then there's the width of windows. 

A title window for a Word Den post - or an email - only has so much space in it. Email title space varies according to the email provider, but it's usually about sixty characters. This means you have to be careful to be fairly brief so that the end of your title isn't cut-off. 

If you're reading your email on a phone you may have even less space.

I got an email the other day from the grocery chain Tesco's on-line arm, which trades as Tesco Direct.

The latest offers and more from Tesco's Dire

the title promised.

Ah well. I suppose that's honest, if nothing else.

Word To Use Today: dire. This word is to do with the Latin word dīrus, ominous or fearful.