C*rses

One of the things that I don't understand about swearing is why there is such a need to pretend that people aren't. It's common to hear things that would have scandalized people when I was young. Especially given that, when I was young "hell" was still considered to be inappropriate language in some quarters.

And so when people want to put "swear" words on book covers and have them sold in national chains, they simply replace the vowel with an asterisk... like so:

I can't imagine who they think won't know what these titles say.

So... why bother? It's not like people won't immediately recognize the titles as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and Let That Shit Go. If we're not going to be Puritanical as a society, why on Earth would we pretend to be? Sure, there's still something of a taboo about using these terms around preadolescents, but even that is rapidly going the way of the dodo; I've been around children who "swore" like sailors.

References to sex, body parts/bodily functions and waste have pretty much lost all of their shock value, much like "damn" has. So why not just let them go? Language evolves, and sometimes rapidly, there are already new words that are moving onto the list of Think That One Shall Not Say, some of the ones that are currently there, accordingly, can go on to other things.