iPad profanity engraving: my silliest MF question thus far

October 19, 2014 4:49 PM

I'd like to get my iPad engraved with: When this baby hits 88 mph / You're gonna see some serious shit. Apple rejected shit and sh*t, but accepts sh.t sh;t and sht. In your opinion, do any of those read as intentional substitutes rather than typos?
posted by jenmakes to Writing & Language (18 answers total)

None of those read as intentional substitutes to me. Sh_t would, if they accepted that. Or sh-t. It's possible they're clever enough to have anything that looks intentional already on the reject list.
posted by not that girl at 4:52 PM on October 19, 2014

Best answer: All read as typos to me.

Maybe sh!t though?
posted by chimpsonfilm at 4:52 PM on October 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Yeah, looks like typos to me too. Sheet, maybe?
posted by a humble nudibranch at 4:54 PM on October 19, 2014

Maybe you could leave a space and fill the "i" in with an engraving pen and a ruler? You'll have a couple other lower-case "i"s in that sentence to measure and compare to, so it might not be impossible to just scratch in.
posted by fifthrider at 4:54 PM on October 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Forgive me if this is off topic, but I imagine you could get it 99% engraved (without, for instance, the final 't') and then take it to a jeweler or someplace for the final letter.
posted by Mr. Justice at 4:59 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Seconding the idea of getting it engraved by a third-party, then you can get whatever you want.

Otherwise I agree that Sh_t or Sh-t appear more intentional.
posted by jpeacock at 5:03 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You could have the first part of the quote ("When this baby hits 88 mph..."). Anyone worth knowing will know the rest.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:05 PM on October 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

You can definitely go to an after-market engraver. I did so recently for a retirement gift, and it was inexpensive.
posted by donajo at 5:08 PM on October 19, 2014

Depending on what their font looks like, sh;t could look fine. I might do that, and then touch it up with a diamond scribe to make the ; look a little more like i.
posted by aimedwander at 5:20 PM on October 19, 2014

If you were to go with aimedwander's idea, I'd suggest sh:t instead of using a semicolon. Then just connect the dots.
posted by Beti at 5:30 PM on October 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

It'd be easiest to use "snit" then have the engraver add the ascender to the n. Alternatively, there are Unicode characters you could substitute that would look virtually identical to various characters in "shit" but whether that would work depends on whether the screening is done by a human or an automated blacklist.
posted by w0mbat at 5:34 PM on October 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'd use 'shift' as it's sort of a typing pun.

Failing that, try unicode and see if it will accept it.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:13 PM on October 19, 2014

Can you do s h i t ? (spaces between each letter)
posted by ErikH2000 at 6:37 PM on October 19, 2014

I would use "s___" or "sh__." I'd also want to know if they allow "sh-t" or "sh**."
posted by John Cohen at 6:38 PM on October 19, 2014

If you're going to spell it, spell it right. Otherwise that 5h!7 gon' look stupit.

Find a third party to engrave it for you. This company was recently promoted on John Gruber's blog Daring Fireball. Try checking them out maybe?
posted by oceanjesse at 7:27 PM on October 19, 2014

Vote with your dollars that you're worth more than having your words policed.

https://www.google.ca/webhp?q=ipad+engraving+-apple.com#q=ipad+engraving+-apple.com
posted by tapesonthefloor at 7:28 PM on October 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

i-with-accent for i? Play with unicode.

(Interestingly, U+200B is apparently "zero-width space").

Of course, you might end up with square boxes all over your inscription or something. Unicode's tricky.
posted by Leon at 8:02 PM on October 19, 2014

Maybe one of these instead?
posted by at the crossroads at 9:39 PM on October 19, 2014