Stop F***ing Swearing

 When I was a wee kid, Mom and Dad Stewart-Laing gave me a quick ‘don’t swear talk’. The approach was, frankly, genius. “If you say those words, grown-ups will think you’re angry and uneducated and won’t take you seriously,” Mom Stewart-Laing informed me. Magic words to a 7-year-old who thinks their opinions are Serious Business. In one swoop, she killed the forbidden fruit appeal, and instilled in me a truthful assessment of social values. Unfortunately, a lot of people missed this one, and swearing went straight in the ‘cool forbidden thing’ category. The net result is a lot of stories where the dialogue gets peppered with four-letter words in an attempt to make the characters sound ‘adult’ and ‘edgy’. My problem here is the same as my problem with any verbal tic that makes it into print. Before long, it’s not only lost it’s emotional punch, but it becomes an active annoyance to the reader, as they have to filter out all the f***s and d***s and whatever else to get the gist of the dialogue. Sure, lots of people talk like that, but fictional dialogue is unrealistic by requirement. Just a few well-placed cusswords will let us get the flavour of the character’s speaking style, without forcing the reader to plough through a lot of verbal filler.