Apple website adds special code so that the word ‘click’ doesn’t look rude

‘There’s more to love with every click,’ the almost-embarrassing message reads

Andrew Griffin
Friday 26 February 2016 12:03 EST
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Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at an event in San Francisco
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at an event in San Francisco (Getty)

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Apple added a small tweak to the code that powers its website to stop itself accidentally swearing.

The site added special code to keep the two first letters of “click” apart from one another, to avoid any unfortunate mis-reading.

The code was discovered on a message on its page about Mac OS, its computer operating system.

“There’s more to love with every click,” the message reads.

And Apple made sure it did so by adding a special “span” tag into the CSS code that runs its site. That makes sure that the kerning of the letters — how far they are apart — doesn’t lead to unfortunate accidents.

There’s no doubt that the message would have been noticed if the letters had been too close together. Apple’s tweak was completely hidden in the website’s source code, and thus had to be actively searched out to be found, meaning that something similar out in the open would almost certainly have been spotted.

The message was first spotted by designer Dan Leech.

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