No Frakkin' Way!

This spring, we've been following Language Log's discussion of swear words in print. The linguists at Language Log have no patience with publications such as The New York Times which choose cloying coyness over taboo words. They much prefer the approach of the Guardian and the Economist, both of which will use a swearword judiciously. As the Guardian's online Style Guide says,

We are more liberal than any other newspaper, using words such as cunt and fuck that most of our competitors would not use.

The editor's guidelines are straightforward:

First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend.

Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes.

Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.

Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a copout, or as Charlotte Bronte elegantly put it: "The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent people are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals."

The Language Log discussion covers a number of techniques media and subcultures use to avoid taboo words, including off-word substitutions (such as flip) or coded obscenities (such as Battlestar Gallactica's use of frak) as well as invented swearwords (such as Science Fiction writer Larry Niven's tanj, derived from "there ain't no justice") and avoidance characters (such as f**k or @#$!).

For more reading, see

• Fake Cuss Words wiki
• Language Log's Words That Can't Be Printed in the New York Times and Goram Motherfrakkers!
  
• Diacritiques's Avoiding the asterisks . . . of avoidance
• "Thinking specifically about the F-word . . ." which discusses an AP poll on the use of profanity in public discourse (also from Language Log)