[From Outside the Wall (dir. Crane Wilbur, 1950).]
“A bright future in the pencil” — in the pencil what ? Business, I suppose.
It’s possible that “the pencil business” is a jokey way of referring to accounting, but I can find no evidence for that. I think that here the pencil business is, indeed, the pencil business. Outside the Wall might have been a different (and duller) movie had ex-convict Larry Nelson (Richard Basehart) studied accounting.
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Wednesday, July 26, 2023
The pencil business
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I asked ChatGPT to complete the following sentence:”A position is open for a young man offering a bright future in the pencil…”
It replied with: “A position is open for a young man offering a bright future in the pencil manufacturing industry, where creativity and innovation converge to bring forth the next generation of writing instruments.”
I told it that was an interesting answer, but could it provide one that would fit in a standard newspaper want ad. It replied with, “Position open for a young man in pencil manufacturing. Promising future with opportunities for creativity and innovation. Apply now!”
Brevity doesn’t seem to be its strength.
LOL. It also went way too far (or long) when I asked it to write an e-mail from a student to a professor asking for an assignment.
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