PC Load Letter
Encyclopedia
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
, originally a printer
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
error message, which has grown into popular culture as a reference to a confusing or inappropriate error message
Error message
An error message is information displayed when an unexpected condition occurs, usually on a computer or other device. On modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces, error messages are often displayed using dialog boxes...
.
Explanation
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
LaserJet
LaserJet
LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of dry electrophotographic laser printers marketed by the American computer-company Hewlett-Packard . The HP LaserJet was the world's first desktop laser printer.-Technology:...
printers such as the LaserJet II, III, and 4
HP LaserJet 4
The HP LaserJet 4 is a group of monochrome laser printers produced in the early to mid-1990s as part of the LaserJet series by Hewlett Packard . The 4 series has various models, including the standard LaserJet 4 for business use, the 4L for personal use and the 4P for small businesses...
series. The error is always displayed fully capitalized.
The actual meaning of the message is convoluted: "PC" is a two-character abbreviation that stands for "paper cassette", the tray that holds blank paper for the printer to use. These two-character codes are a legacy feature carried over from the first LaserJet printers, which could only use a two-character display for all printer status and error messages.
"Load", in this context, is an instruction to refill the paper tray. "Letter
Letter (paper size)
Letter or US Letter is the most common paper size for office use in several countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, the Philippines, and Chile. It measures 8.5 by 11 inches ....
" is the standard paper size
Paper size
Many paper size standards conventions have existed at different times and in different countries. Today there is one widespread international ISO standard and a localised standard used in North America . The paper sizes affect writing paper, stationery, cards, and some printed documents...
used in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Thus, the error is instructing the user to refill the paper tray with letter-sized paper. A variant is "PC LOAD LEGAL", meaning that the printer requires paper, size legal, be loaded.
The non-intuitive message confuses people for several reasons. The abbreviation "PC" is misleading because it is widely understood — especially in the context of electronic office equipment — to mean "personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
", suggesting to many that the problem lies in the computer, not the printer. The word "LOAD" is also ambiguous, as it can also refer to the transfer of electronic data between disk and memory. Furthermore, the word "LETTER" is only associated with paper size in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and some Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n countries as A4 is the standard size used in the rest of the world. Thus, users encountering this message may believe that they are being instructed to transfer the data or content of their typed letter (as in correspondence) to the printer, even though they have already sent the job to the printer. (The printer could not "know" that they had anything they wanted to print if the print job had not already been initiated from the computer, however.)
Older LaserJet printers do not automatically resize a page when the page size of a document does not match the paper that is loaded in the printer. When trying to print a document whose paper size is set to "letter" on A4-sized paper the message occurs. The error "PC LOAD A4" appears in countries using this paper size. However, as many programs use "letter" as the default format, the confusing message is often encountered by non-American users who are unaware of the recovery procedure (empty print queue and printer buffer or press "Shift/Continue" and in extreme cases, restart printer and repeat). The LaserJet 5 introduced an easy-to-find "GO" button to override the warning message.
Popularization of the term
The term was popularized by the comedy film Office SpaceOffice Space
Office Space is a 1999 American comedy film satirizing work life in a typical 1990s software company. Written and directed by Mike Judge, it focuses on a handful of individuals fed up with their jobs portrayed by Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, and Diedrich...
. Michael Bolton (David Herman
David Herman
David Herman is an American actor, comedian and voice actor best known as an original cast member of MADtv and for his role as Michael Bolton in Office Space. He is also known for his voice roles on television programs such as Futurama and King of the Hill.- Biography :David Herman was born in New...
), one of the three main characters, reads the error message from the status display on a printer, after which he asks, "PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?" This message appears on the display just after Bolton fills the printer's tray with blank paper. Frustrations such as this lead the main characters of the film to take revenge on the malfunctioning printer by destroying it with a baseball bat.
Since then, the phrase has appeared in numerous forms: on T-shirt
T-shirt
A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....
s, on the Internet (particularly in blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
entries), as a 2005 Seattle band name, and referenced in the "System Administrator Appreciation Day
System Administrator Appreciation Day
System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as Sysadmin Day, SysAdminDay, SAD or SAAD, was created by system administrator Ted Kekatos...
" song by Canadian comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie are a Canadian comedy group from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Childhood friends Wes Borg and Joe Bird met actress Cathleen Rootsaert at a weekly Theatre Sports comedy jam to form the initial group. Later, Neil Grahn was recruited...
("He's the only one in the building who knows what 'PC LOAD LETTER' means.") This message is also displayed in the game Doom RPG
Doom RPG
Doom RPG is a mobile phone game developed by Fountainhead Entertainment. It combines the Doom first-person shooter franchise with role-playing elements. The storyline incorporates many of the events of Doom 3, but involves different characters than those in the computer version...
, on a computer terminal next to a broken door. In the MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online was a massively multiplayer online game developed by Monolith Productions created by Richard Carroll. It was the official continuation of the storyline of the Matrix series of films. The game began closed beta-testing in June 2004 which was then opened for people who pre-ordered...
, the printers in the office structures also displayed the "PC LOAD LETTER" message.