This gem comes to you courtesy of The Daily Grind 528.
WhiteSmoke: “text enrichment” software that promises to “upgrade a basic text into a more sophisticated, professional text.” Their demo shows how a few mouse clicks can turn "I admire your work" into "I greatly appreciate your complicated work."
I'm with Mike on this one - I just don't get it. I greatly appreciate your complicated work? What the hell is that?
In fact, their site reads like a manual on how not to write concise, sophisticated text. Here's my favorite:
After completing your text, click on the Enrichment button that is on your toolbar. As soon as the text's meaning and context is understood, the text is Enriched. The new text components and English phrases are added.
Wow. I wonder if they used WhiteSmoke to write that paragraph. It sounds like something from Google's Translate into English service.
Then again, if the software did the opposite, it might be useful. As we should all already know (Plain English for Lawyers, anyone?), less is often more. Adding unnecessary words does not make a sentence “sophisticated” or “professional” - it just makes it wordy.