You @$$...

It's always been so confusing to me, the power of a simple word, composed of completely normal letters, written the same way as one would write words like "cat" or "stalagmite." What makes particular words so offensive, so vulgar that they can't be said in front of toddlers or on TV? What makes that certain arrangement of letters so disgusting?

Connotation, of course, plays a major role. A word muttered as a curse or insult is bound to become offensive over time. But why? Who decided which words are "bad" and "good"? Who got to vote that one word is worse than another? I don't quite understand.

Let's start with "damn." Not a word you'd expect to come from the mouth of a small child [it sometimes does, in cases like mine, when a certain great-grandfather spilled it too often in front of me]. Yet while kids draw away from it, gape their mouths at brave peers who use it in the classroom, adults throw it around without a second thought. It's not a very bad word, it's just not a nice one. Sort of like "hell" and "pissed."

I think, perhaps, it is context more than connotation with these little words that determines its "goodness" or "badness." Writers, like me, use it to provoke a stronger emotion in the reader [I can still remember the first time I felt comfortable enough to use "damn" in a story, and it made the piece SO much better... I think I was nine?] and speakers/debaters use it carefully, attempting to sound sophisticated and severe at the same time.

See that? Sophisticated! The same word that makes a child sound ill-mannered makes a debater sophisticated. I don't understand.

Well, maybe I do. It's all in the delivery [isn't everything?]. If I sat down to my computer and dropped the f-bomb in the first sentence of a book, it would be a very stupid idea. But if was writing from an impoverished urban boy's point of view and after a chapter or so my character dropped the bomb, it would be nearly appropriate. I'm not fond of that word--too ugly, reminds me of slamming my hand in a door--but it would fix the context and delivery and help the reader to understand my character.

Historical reference is okay, too. If I'm writing a story set in the 1850s and a character drops a racial slur, it's also almost appropriate. Again, not my purpose for writing. Hate history, and slurs. But it works.

I'm not about to scrawl "bad words" across the side of a building, but when people click their tongues and tsk their teeth at well-placed swear words, it makes me want to grab a can of spray paint. Seriously. Grow up. If I was using these words to insult someone or for no good reason, then I'd let you tsk and click. But honestly? I'm no moron. Sometimes I act like one, but really and truly, I'm pretty intelligent. And I'm a lot more mature than most kids my age. So if I want to swear in my book, get over it. If I want to throw the f-word around an elementary school classroom, punch me.

End of story.

Arty is [in a writing mood, and] OUT.