On Deleting the Expletive

A while back I had an email from Buck Worthington, of Buck the Legal System, letting me know how much he enjoyed my blog. His last sentence was: "It's nice to know someone still can write without all the F-bombs!" Thinking about this, I realize I have a few thoughts on the matter of swearing, both in blogs and in general, and (lucky you) I have decided to share them here.

As usual, I have only my own generation to blame for the present situation. Before the sixties, swearing was limited to the male sex (ooh, I used the word "sex" - that'll keep the search engines happy) and was generally reserved for the expression of strong emotions and thoughts. It was unthinkable that any man should swear in the presence of a lady and males pretended that such words would not even be known to the fairer sex (I don't care if that offends the feminists - women are generally much easier on the eye than men), let alone uttered by them.

As part of our rebellion against the perceived evils of our parents' generation, the sixties children decided to be "real" in the matter of forbidden swear words. Our point was that they are not magical and do not hold some special power; they are words, that's all. So we swore when we felt like it. And the females joined in with approval.

We were aware that this scandalized our parents and, of course, this just added to our determination to continue to swear at every opportunity. Today this might be called "sticking it to them". What escaped our notice was that this effect on our parents actually disproved our primary theory; the words did have power because we gave it to them. They had the power to shock our parents and they had the power to make us feel hip, rebellious and cool.

Years passed and, like so many of the new ideas that we played with in the sixties, swearing became the norm, gaining acceptance in almost all sections of society. It became, as Buck has pointed out, the exception not to litter one's speech with four letter words. And this produced two effects.

Firstly, the words began to lose their power. As they spread through everyone's normal conversation and from there into the printed word, the words lost their original meaning and became more like punctuation than anything else. We did not forget their meanings; it was more that they became subconscious, only to be highlighted on occasion by some conversational rebel. A short interchange that I remember from my days of working in a factory is the perfect illustration of this.

It was during a break and one fellow used the standard phrase to convey just about anything in any situation:

"Fookin' 'ell."

To which a much smarter guy returned:

"For your sake, I 'ope they do."

That was a much more profound statement than even the second speaker knew. We laughed, of course, and returned immediately to our habit of sprinkling such meaningless words throughout our conversation. The words had died and become no more than punctuation.

The second effect has become apparent through the printed word. The swear word, especially the F-bomb, has begun to substitute for meaningful adjectives and adverbs. It is so much easier to say "it was fucking bad" than to find the words that actually describe how bad it was. Sheer laziness has meant that vast numbers of us now use swear words to avoid having to describe something more accurately.

And it is this that I object to most. The young may think that I am offended by the words themselves but they are wrong; as I have explained, it was my generation that brought these words into the light so we are not shocked or scandalized by them. It's the thoughtless and unconscious way they are used by the young that offends me. They seem unaware that the constant use of such words illustrates not their coolness but their lack of originality or creativity. The words have become no more than the "baah" of sheep.

Just as an exercise, find a blog littered with such meaningless profanities and try deleting them. Does it alter the sense of what has been written? Of course it doesn't; the words are there merely as punctuation and as a sad attempt to be cool. In the end, all they amount to is a signal that the blog really isn't worth reading. And I suppose that they perform a useful function in that.

There are other words that do this particular job just as well, however. The meaningless "meh" is a sure sign that nothing of any note will follow, just as the word "so" used as the first word of a post is another excellent indication that it's time to move on to the next blog. So we really don't need all these swear words in blogging. They are meaningless, pointless and do nothing more than confirm that their user will never be a writer.

You may dismiss me as a dinosaur and uncool if you wish; that is your prerogative (look it up at dictionary.com). But you will be sentencing yourself to a lifetime of running with the herd, never writing anything worth reading and never changing anything in your world. And, as a final illustration, let me show you how swearing should be used - to convey passion and conviction:

For fuck's sake, let's stop all of this pointless swearing!