Joanne Harris condemns Clean Reader app for replacing swear words in novels

A new app that allows readers to swap swear words in their novels with sanitised versions is facing a backlash from furious authors, who have accused it of setting a dangerous precedent of censorship.

The app, entitled Clean Reader, has been designed to take explicit words out of any book printed in electronic format - with or without permission from its author - to swap them with child-friendly versions.

The technology works on a scale from "clean" - removing the "worst" swear words such as f*** - to "superclean", which will substitute words including damn.

^{The Clean Reader app gives users a scale to choose from (Clean Reader)}

Introduced by an American couple, and available on Apple and Android, it has now been roundly criticised by some authors who believe it will have a severe negative impact on their work.

One called the development "f***ing horrifying", while others compared it with the type of censorship that "ends in burning books".

The creators insist it does not delete words from novels, with readers free to peruse the original version if they prefer.

Joanne Harris, the award-winning author of Chocolat and The Gospel of Loki, said she found the concept of Clean Reader "infinitely more offensive than any of the words it blanks out".

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In a blog post dedicated to the subject, she said authors chose their words carefully, and for a reason, with third-party censors editing their work "sometimes very clumsily" being unacceptable.

"Anyone who works with words understands their power," she said. "Words, if used correctly, can achieve almost anything. To tamper with what is written – however much we may dislike certain words and phrases – is to embrace censorship."

She added: "Well, we’ve been down this road before. We should know where it leads by now. It starts with blanking out a few words. It goes on to drape table legs and stick fig leaves onto statues.

"It progresses to denouncing gay or Jewish artists as “degenerate”. It ends with burning libraries and erasing whole civilizations from history."

^{Users of the app are given alternative words to profanities (Clean Reader)}

Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer from Edinburgh, told his Twitter followers: "This - from an author's point of view - is an obscenity: algorithmic censorship of ebooks."

Laurie Penny, a journalist and author, said: "There's now an app for taking the swearwords out of books. I find this f***ing horrifying."

Linda Acaster, a novelist from Yorkshire, argued: "The first act of a dictatorship is to censor books. The second is to ban them. The third is to burn them."

The app was created by Idaho parents Jared and Kirsten Maughan, who were concerned that their daughter had read a book with words that had made her uncomfortable.

In publicity material for the app, they said: "We told her that there was probably an app for this type of thing that would replace profanity with less offensive words and perhaps we should get her a tablet that she could use to read books with.

"To our surprise there wasn’t an app like this. The more we thought about this idea the more we wanted it to be a reality. Eventually we decided we would do all we could to bring Clean Reader to the world."

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Mr Maughan clarified the technology did not censor books, leaving them for people to read in their original form, but had an optional replacement word for those who turned the feature on.

He said: "It's important for people to understand that we do not sell books that have been censored in any way.

"Every book we sell is word for word the exact same as if you had purchased it from any other book retailer. Every book we offer is sold under strict commercial contracts with publishers. Clean Reader does not remove any words from a book.

"The app simply has a feature that allows it to put an opaque "highlight" over specific words if the reader desires. This feature can be turned OFF at any time and the reader can consume the book exactly as it was written by the author."

^{Some authors have criticised an app that takes explicit words out of ebooks (BLOOMBERG)}

The technology, they say, does not violate copyright despite working on any e-book, because "it doesn’t make changes to the file containing the book".

Instructions for the app state: "The 'Clean' setting only blocks major swear words from display. This includes all uses of the F-word we could find.

"The 'Cleaner' setting blocks everything that 'Clean' blocks plus more. 'Squeaky Clean' is the most restrictive setting and will block the most profanity from a book including some hurtful racial terms."

Despite much criticism online, others appeared to be taking it less seriously.

Jojo Moyes, the bestselling author of Me Before You, joked she was "now trying to imagine" how it would work on Irvine Welsh's expletive-ridden novels, such as Trainspotting and Filth.

And Ian Rankin, the crime writer, gave a tongue-in-cheek response to the uproar on Twitter.