How much cursing is too much?

Realism is good. You might try reading your piece out loud a few times like a script and see how it sounds. If you're getting tired of it, the chances are your audience will too.

jaksen said:

Hehe, some of us count by hand.

I wonder why we even worry about this stuff. I know I don't. If my characters swear, they swear. It's about them, not me.

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I normally write in the same way that you describe -- if my characters swear, they swear, and that's it.

In the WIP I mentioned in my first post I counted the f-bombs for a very specific reason. I needed to find out how widely I had spread them among my characters, because I decided that, where possible, I wanted to restrict them to a character who is the last person who might be expected to use them -- a miss goody-goody.

Fullon_v4.0 said:

You might try reading your piece out loud a few times like a script and see how it sounds.

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I use TextAloud to do this. My first edit consists of listening to every scene, paragraph by paragraph.

By doing this I pick up on words accidentally omitted, but more importantly, I can listen to the cadence to ensure the rhythm and pace fir the tenor of that scene.

TextAloud lets me concentrate on this, whereas I find reading it aloud just lacks something.

Kallithrix said:

But that is worrying that people will put a book down because of swearing.

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If someone does that, they're not my audience. *shrug*

Roxxsmom said:

They get mapped into our brains in a way that can be pretty resistant to change as we get older.

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Which I misread as "mopped our brains out"... with soap?

Buffysquirrel said:

But then I can't understand why films with consensual sex get higher certificates than films with endless violence, either.

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This totally baffles me too. Young teens are exposed to fantasy violence as if it's just a fact of life, but when it comes to sex or nudity... oh no, protect their young innocent minds!

Perhaps if we protected them from violence and exposed them to more (healthy, consensual) sex, there'd be more love and less war in a few generations

How much cursing is too much?

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most experts that i have read agree that it varies somewhere between a shitload and a fuck-ton (metric).

Kallithrix said:

This totally baffles me too. Young teens are exposed to fantasy violence as if it's just a fact of life, but when it comes to sex or nudity... oh no, protect their young innocent minds!

Perhaps if we protected them from violence and exposed them to more (healthy, consensual) sex, there'd be more love and less war in a few generations

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I hear you!

Something happens when people have kids, I think. It makes sex into something dirty and embarrassing. Nearly everyone has sex to beget their children (unless adoption, in-vitro or artificial insemination is involved), and almost every couple had sex before they were married in this day and age (and I suspect relatively few people marry their first-ever sex partner either). But most people seem to get mortified when it comes to talking to their kids about it. Mortified to the point where some people still just tell their kids about the stork, or that angels planted seeds in their mommies' stomachs, or some other garbage.

I think the double standard re film and TV ratings (between violence and sex) is because most parents spend more time worrying that their kids may have sex some day than they do worrying that their kids will kill someone. Since nearly 100% of people eventually have sex (and usually before they get married), but most people don't become murderers, well, you can see why this is.

Now why we Americans (and maybe British people too?) consider sex to be bad when nearly all of us do it, well that's probably a conversation for another thread.

William Haskins said:

most experts that i have read agree that it varies somewhere between a shitload and a fuck-ton (metric).

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I may have to quote you on this.

Roxxsmom said:

I may have to quote you on this.

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it's science, after all...

Buffysquirrel said:

But then I can't understand why films with consensual sex get higher certificates than films with endless violence, either.

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You can't show a naked woman, but you can show that naked woman getting decapitated in slow motion.

Roxxsmom said:

But most people seem to get mortified when it comes to talking to their kids about it. Mortified to the point where some people still just tell their kids about the stork, or that angels planted seeds in their mommies' stomachs, or some other garbage.

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When I was four, my parents told me babies came from flower buds. It scared me off picking flowers for a while. Maybe that was the reason they told me that.

Then when I was eight, they took me to a natural history museum where there were step-by-step pictures of a woman giving birth. I was horrified.

Queen of Swords said:

Then when I was eight, they took me to a natural history museum where there were step-by-step pictures of a woman giving birth. I was horrified.

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Jesus fucking christ, I'm not surprised - I'm still horrified! The thought of where babies come from (or more to the point, how they come OUT of there) is enough to put me off sex for life!

...Almost

Kallithrix said:

Jesus fucking christ, I'm not surprised - I'm still horrified! The thought of where babies come from (or more to the point, how they come OUT of there) is enough to put me off sex for life!

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"I wanted to be born again, but Mom refused."

Kallithrix said:

Jesus fucking christ, I'm not surprised - I'm still horrified! The thought of where babies come from (or more to the point, how they come OUT of there) is enough to put me off sex for life!

...Almost

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It was certainly enough to put me off unprotected sex for life.

My mom's stories about all the vomiting she did while pregnant also had a lot to do with this.

William Haskins said:

it's science, after all...

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The international PFU (profanity units).

Kallithrix said:

Perhaps if we protected them from violence and exposed them to more (healthy, consensual) sex, there'd be more love and less war in a few generations

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You should read Lenny Bruce on this subject.

There is no such fucking thing as too much fucking cursing.

You won't please all potential readers. For some, one f is one too effing many. For others, it ain't realistic unless we are trying to exceed Pulp Fiction's quota of mofos.

Incidentally, how come you never hear mofo and MILF in the same sentence? You would have thought that they were made for each other.

I guess you can have too much of anything. If you noticed the amount of swearing and it grated, then I'd say that was too many. For you.

I can't be sure without seeing the piece, but it sounds a little like lazy characterisation. The author may have decided that "drill sergeants swear" so he or she makes their drill sergeant swear at every opportunity. After a while that stops being an interesting part of their character and just becomes wallpaper. We either stop noticing it or we get annoyed by the pattern.

I allow my characters to make decisions like this. Some swear like motherfucking truck drivers. Some wouldn't say shit if their mouth was full of it.

BenPanced said:

You can't show a naked woman, but you can show that naked woman getting decapitated in slow motion.

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Not in Britain you can't! The BBFC are very strict on sexualised violence, particularly towards women. Also oddly strict on CGI blood, which will make something that could have been rated 12 rated 18.

With film classification, context is all when swearing. I believe a swear word as a verb is deemed to be worse than as a noun, or as a way to say 'shut up'.

For example, you have the word 'piss' in Watership Down, which is rated a U. But it's actually the seagull telling someone to 'piss off'. Had it been a verb, the BBFC might have been stricter!

Lady Ice said:

For example, you have the word 'piss' in Watership Down, which is rated a U. But it's actually the seagull telling someone to 'piss off'. Had it been a verb, the BBFC might have been stricter!

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But isn't "piss off" a verb plus an adverb? "piss" is the action here; "off" is the descriptive.

Now we can debate about proper grammar in cussin'. Where's that article on how "fuck" can be used as any part of speech? Well, here's another:

http://peevishpenman.blogspot.com/2010/09/nine-parts-of-speech-and-f-word.html

And on that note, I'm reminded of a funny tho NSFW song by Amduscia.

Once! said:

The author may have decided that "drill sergeants swear" so he or she makes their drill sergeant swear at every opportunity. After a while that stops being an interesting part of their character and just becomes wallpaper. We either stop noticing it or we get annoyed by the pattern.

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I remember a movie I saw once where the drill sergeant was strangely polite and soft spoken. Didn't swear at all. He was also one of the most scary/disturbing drill sergeant characters ever. Of course, that might be because Christopher Walkin played him.

And darn, I can't remember the movie, except for that bit.

Roxxsmom said:

I remember a movie I saw once where the drill sergeant was strangely polite and soft spoken. Didn't swear at all. He was also one of the most scary/disturbing drill sergeant characters ever. Of course, that might be because Christopher Walkin played him.

And darn, I can't remember the movie, except for that bit.

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<goes off, roots around> Appears to be Biloxi Blues (which I've not seen).......???

Kallithrix said:

This totally baffles me too. Young teens are exposed to fantasy violence as if it's just a fact of life, but when it comes to sex or nudity... oh no, protect their young innocent minds!

Perhaps if we protected them from violence and exposed them to more (healthy, consensual) sex, there'd be more love and less war in a few generations

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The hypocrisy of it all drives me batty.

Lady Ice said:

For example, you have the word 'piss' in Watership Down, which is rated a U.

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Yes, that still surprises me. I don't think they'd get away with it now, and even wonder if they'd edit it out if they showed it in an afternoon slot.

Interestingly, while I was researching all this I came upon a study* that had been commissioned by the likes of ITC (independent television commission) and the BSC (broadcasting standards commission) to determine the British public's attitude towards swearing in film and tv. If you go to page 52, there's a list of swear words, their perceived severity and ranking. Inevitably the top one is cunt, followed by motherfucker, then fuck. But the ranking of some of the others is a real surprise to me! Twat and 'piss off' are only 13 and 14 respectively, whereas prick is number 7? And wanker is number 4 right below fuck, but shit is way down at 17!

Also interesting is that 'piss' isn't even on there as a single word, independent of phrases like 'piss off' or 'pissed off'.

Baffling...

* The study is from 2000, so may be out of date by now, as we all know that cultural attitudes shift quite rapidly these days...

Kallithrix said:

Interestingly, while I was researching all this I came upon a study* that had been commissioned by the likes of ITC (independent television commission) and the BSC (broadcasting standards commission) to determine the British public's attitude towards swearing in film and tv.

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Awright, admit it, you too read the study hoping to learn new words... and were disappointed!

Blinkk said:

When I was growing up, my mom taught us that "shut up" was a bad word. So just pointing out that different people consider different words "bad" (if a word can truly be such a thing.)

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It's funny, because I grew up in a household that lived on the rule of "do as I say, not as I do" with cussing. Variably, my parents and their friends could either never cuss or cuss like sailors, which was fine as long as I was well into high school before I dared repeat any of it. I don't normally cuss much unless I'm excited, pissed, or hanging out with my brothers (bad influences them ).

As a parent now, we try to avoid cuss but don't make a scene if one or two slip out. And we've given up on filtering it out of media. If we banned every tv show/movie/video game with cursing in it, we'd never see anything cool. My kids are oddly kosher about knowing the difference between hearing/reading the words and repeating them.

Yet, we also decided at some point to make some terms like "shut up" bad words. Also, any word that my kids latch onto and keep using inappropriately without end is added to the "bad words in practice list". Too foggy this morning to thing of the whole list. Most recent addition was any form of "addicted" which got over applied and then started debates about whether being addicted to marshmallows was as bad as being addicted to drugs followed by what substances are or are not drugs... My kids think too much, and I'm proud.

William Haskins said:

most experts that i have read agree that it varies somewhere between a shitload and a fuck-ton (metric).

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ROFLMFAO

No really... I fell out of my office chair laughing. It hurt, but it was worth it.