Scientists confess to sneaking Bob Dylan lyrics into their work for the past 17 years

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. In the 1980s, I was writing a manual for a computer text editor

When revising an existing file, up to a certain point, the user easily could go back to the unrevised file. After he or she had saved the changes, one could not (well, actually, they could, but it was considerably more work.) I quoted Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

My boss read what I had written, circled it in red ink and wrote a large red NO POETRY next to it.

I revised it to "the old text will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again". My boss did not object, apparently being unfamiliar with the closing line of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.