Tolerance of Expletives in Novels

Curse words are just another tool. They need to be used in the proper way, but they should still be used. I've heard the argument that using such language is the sign of a deficient vocabulary, but like others have said, there are times when only the f-bomb will have the desired effect.

Is it time for Stephen Fry on the Joys of Swearing?


Every word in the language you write in is a tool. Use them when you need to.

If any readers object to language in a novel, I say fuck those people, fuck them back to the 19th century where they belong.

Seriously, writers have been fighting for hundreds of years for the freedom to use whatever language they choose. The victory was won and secured generations ago, and really shouldn't be a consideration anymore (so long as you don't mind the occasional fatwa). I'm almost embarrassed by this question, to be completely honest.

Roxxsmom said:

Out of curiosity, is "bloody" been in use in English longer than, say, "s***" or "f***"?

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Per the Wikipedia article, bloody started being used as profanity around 1750. And per other articles, shit goes directly back to Old English, and fuck more obscurely to around 1475 as such, but it has so many cognates that it's likely the root is far older.

My characters use 'bloody' occasionally, as a sort of intermediate swear a little rougher than 'damn/damned'.

To be fair, I don't think the OP was asking if it was legal to use strong language in novels, or even whether or not some publishers allowed it (I'm pretty sure even people who hate swearing know it's allowed, since they complain about how it's taken over mainstream media and pop culture). He's asking whether people on this site use it in their work, and how they feel when they encounter it in the work of others.

But this is an example of something where you're going to get all kinds of different opinions. I think you need to write the story you want in the voice that makes sense to it, then solicit feedback from people you think are likely to be in your target audience. If you're writing a gritty fantasy along the lines of George RR Martin, your old Sunday school teacher, for instance, might not be the best beta reader Nor might someone whose fantasy fandom is focused exclusively on writers who are gentler with language, like Tolkien, Peter S Beagle, CS Lewis and so on.

Reziac said:

Per the Wikipedia article, bloody started being used as profanity around 1750. And per other articles, shit goes directly back to Old English, and fuck more obscurely to around 1475 as such, but it has so many cognates that it's likely the root is far older.

My characters use 'bloody' occasionally, as a sort of intermediate swear a little rougher than 'damn/damned'.

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Interesting. Yeah, I didn't think bloody was really archaic. I never thought of it as strong swearing at all, but we don't use it in the US anyway. It seems to get tossed out a lot in British novels I've read, even ones that shied away from stronger swear words. I always registered it as similar to damned in intensity, but possibly a bit milder.

The thing is, when one attempts to either represent people in a historic context, or in a setting that's vaguely historic (even if it's a world that never was), there are different ways of approaching this. I've noticed that movies and TV shows about the Romans, for instance, often have the actors speaking with British accents, and even using terms like "bloody," when they obviously did no such thing. I've even seen different types of British accents used for common soldiers versus officers or patrician class Romans. Of course, a lot of those old shows (like I Claudius) were British productions anyway, and the accent works for Americans, since it captures that sense of foreignness without being too foreign.

It's silly, but we tend to think British accents are quaint and old fashioned over here, so if you have a character in a "medieval era" fantasy novel saying "bloody," or using even more modern British colloquialisms (like rhyming slang, or words like "git," or "prat," we think it sounds medieval as US readers. Meanwhile, British readers are probably scratching their heads wondering why medieval people are talking like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

TomKnighton said:

Curse words are just another tool. They need to be used in the proper way, but they should still be used. I've heard the argument that using such language is the sign of a deficient vocabulary, but like others have said, there are times when only the f-bomb will have the desired effect.

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Yes. My stock example is this:

Messed up is generic.

Screwed up implies incompetence.

Fucked up implies a malicious factor.

One could describe it instead, but why circumlocute when the situation calls for being direct?

TomKnighton said:

I've heard the argument that using such language is the sign of a deficient vocabulary

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Or laziness, or lack of creativity. We've had everything from "Swearing limits your sales" to "if your aim is to entertain giggling little school boys who pleasure themselves by hearing it, then go for it" (here).

As for the history of "fuck", that word dates back to the 15th century. So in something set before that time, "fuck" would be too modern. Otherwise? It's not.

I'd love to have swearing limit my sales the way it limits George RR Martin's sales...

Queen of Swords said:

Or laziness, or lack of creativity. We've had everything from "Swearing limits your sales" to "if your aim is to entertain giggling little school boys who pleasure themselves by hearing it, then go for it" (here).

As for the history of "fuck", that word dates back to the 15th century. So in something set before that time, "fuck" would be too modern. Otherwise? It's not.

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Using "fuck" now and again or even frequently didn't prevent Harold Pinter from winning the Nobel Prize and writers like James Kelman and Roddy Doyle from winning the Booker Prize. In Pinter's case, one of his plays, Landscape, had to premiere on BBC Radio rather than on the stage because the Lord Chamberlain (whose powers of theatrical censorship would be abolished that same year, 1968) objected to one character using the expression "Fuck all" once in a play which runs around forty minutes.

It is within my lifetime that a SF novel (Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron from 1969) could cause questions to be asked in the British Houses of Parliaments about the UK Taxpayer supporting "pornography" because it was being serialised in a magazine supported by an Arts Council grant, namely New Worlds, because of its use of fairly frequent profanity. (I've read the novel and there are also sexual references, and a fairly clear hint that oral sex is taking place in one scene, but nothing explicit even by 1969 standards. I expect the fuss reflected on attitudes that SF was juvenile literature, more than anything else.)

I've had comments like the ones above in my time, and expect will do so again as I'm the writer of a fairly sweary YA novel that's currently on submission. If something is gratuitous and unnecessary, it shouldn't be there, but that applies to all kinds of bad writing, not just to strong (not "bad") language. Arguments about whether swearing should be used at all in fiction or drama were lost in the 1960s and 1970s.

Scott Lynch also uses our expletives in his Locke Lamora books. About the only difference is "gods damn."

Martin uses our expletives. So does Abercrombie. I believe Daniel Abraham also does. In modern fantasy, there's a trend toward using our expletives.

After all, everything else is in translation. Why not the curse words?

Queen of Swords said:

As for the history of "fuck", that word dates back to the 15th century. So in something set before that time, "fuck" would be too modern. Otherwise? It's not.

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Maybe not the precise word, so spelled and pronounced. But as the wiki article notes, the Romans had a word that meant the exact same thing, and I vaguely recall shows up the same way in the graffiti of the day. If you're writing in English, you'd translate that Latin word as "fuck".

Cussing is probably as old as language itself. And I'd hazard that most eras were rather more profane than we are today, given that we're coming out (so to speak) of a, um, Victorian period, and most of us had grandparents who grew up with that influence. But nowadays, it's fading.

Reziac said:

Cussing is probably as old as language itself. And I'd hazard that most eras were rather more profane than we are today, given that we're coming out (so to speak) of a, um, Victorian period, and most of us had grandparents who grew up with that influence. But nowadays, it's fading.

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Interesting insight, and you've got a good point. My grandma was born in 1909, so she definitely grew up in the shadow of the Victorians. And she was very intolerant of swearing for her entire life, bless her. "Why do people have to talk like that?" or "Why do people have to talk about things like that?" she'd ask, a genuinely puzzled frown puckering her forehead.

There was a real gender difference in swearing back in the old days too. A lot of those WW II generation guys swore, but they did less of it around their "womenfolk," because ladies weren't supposed to like it.

The double standard about swearing has lessened, but I don't think it's completely gone. Certainly as a girl/teen in the late 70s and early 80s, I sometimes got that "If you talk like that, guys might think the wrong thing about you," sort of line from my parents (both of whom could swear well and creatively when the need arose).

Personally, swearing doesn't bother me, unless it's directed at me or someone else in an angry situation, or unless it's in a professional context. I don't think it's acceptable to swear while teaching my class (and I've asked students to tone their language down in lab once or twice, but really, it's rare, as most seem to know you don't drop f and s bombs in class). There's professional language, then there's casual language.

Lego Bono said:

In my e-mail to her I told her that there was explicit language in my MS, and she responded saying authors have an essentially endless treasure of words to use in the English vocabulary without having to resort to expletives.

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CrastersBabies said:

This is one of those "you can't please everyone" deals.

Would your character use the F-word and other profanity? If so, then write your character cursing.

Is your narrative voice one that allows (naturally) for expletives at times? If so, go for it.

Some people will shy away from curse words. Not your problem and chances are, these people are not your targeted audience.

But, keep in mind that if your cuss words stick out like a sore thumb, there might be a voice issue going on.

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I've never understood the "you have such a wonderful vocabulary, why are you using those words?" thinking. I didn't understand it in grade school in the 70s. I don't understand it now.

Granted, I used those words way too often back then. It took time for me to mature enough to understand the difference between the speaker and the audience. I swear a lot less now.

But that said, words exist for a reason. If there were no reason they wouldn't exist. Sometimes, swear words are the most efficient way to express something.

For a purely personal take on it*:

The computer doesn't work.

The damned computer doesn't work.

The fucking computer doesn't work.

These sentences don't say the same things to me. It is more than the swear words being intensifiers.

The first is merely a statement of fact.

The second implies something like the computer is being obstinate or that I need to get something done and can't.

The third implies something like the computer is out to get me and doing it deliberately just to piss me off.

How else can you say those things in so few words and still have that undercurrent of rage or paranoia or self-centeredness or whatever nuance you want to express?


I sometimes do get tired of reading constant swearing these days. I may put a book down if I think it is excessive. I don't recall putting a book down for that reason alone, but it can be a symptom of other bad writing. So, it is all a matter of good/bad writing, does it serve its purpose in telling the story you want to tell to the audience you want to tell it to?


tl;dr version : use the words you need to use to say what you need to say. No more, no less.

* These meanings are entirely personal connotations and may vary depending on circumstances and others may not share them.

In my science fiction I like to play with the whole idea. I have one character that will casually drop the f-bomb indiscriminately. Now, I don't much care for the word myself (there are other, less frequently used curses that are just more fun to use), but it's what the character would say. Then, on the flip side, I have a flight lieutenant with a very professional manner of speech... until she is shot down, in which case the former character comments that she makes him look like a choir boy. You don't get to see what she says, but when she runs out of curses she just switches to another language and continues. I think leaving it to the imagination makes her outburst that much better, but it wouldn't work for the other one.

I don't have much more to add, other than agreeing that watching Stephen Fry turn the air blue is indeed necessary.

rwm4768 said:

Martin uses our expletives. So does Abercrombie. I believe Daniel Abraham also does. In modern fantasy, there's a trend toward using our expletives.

After all, everything else is in translation. Why not the curse words?

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One reason would be that the culture being depicted is very different from ours. The differences might well be reflected in profanity.

For example, let's say you have a culture that's very comfortable with bodily functions, but that's horrified at any blasphemy against its gods. I would find it pretty implausible for that culture to have profanity that worked the same as ours.

This isn't purely hypothetical. Chaucer used the word "shit," but based on the way he used it, he seemed to think of it as "just a word" and not a form of profanity at all. On the other hand, he disapproved of people blaspheming by saying "zounds!"

Highlighting things like that might actually be a pretty effective way of characterizing the society you're writing about.

NeuroGlide said:

Shazbot! If I want to use frelling curse words, I will the frack use frelling curse words, goramit!

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QFT. Also, I snorted a little reading this.

My current WIP is narrated by an angry, foul mouthed MC and as such, is littered with profanity. That's going to turn some readers off, but I'm OK with that, because I'm telling the story the way it begs to be told and that's my priority. Not anyone's delicate sensibilities.

So members of one of my alien species express their displeasure by clicking their mandibles, and do so throughout the story. Except at the height of the action, when one gets exasperated enough to let fly with an F-bomb (in translation, of course).

It's funny to me, at least.

Roxxsmom said:

I'd love to have swearing limit my sales the way it limits George RR Martin's sales...

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Bwahahaha! I will never forget the use of the term "brotherfucker" in that series. Ahh yes. George, George, George.

I don't mean to seem to attack anyone in this thread (because I understand that certain usage habits become ingrained), but I'm really wondering about this frequent use of "f-bomb" in a thread about the freedom to use the word "fuck".

All euphemisms are more or less repellent to me (with the possible exception of "heck" as a replacement for "hell" because it's just so damn quaint and homely), but this I think "f-bomb" is particularly bad as is "f---" and similar smirking character replacements. (The silliest of which is no doubt motherf-cker, which you've probably seen many times. How is this any more acceptable without the u?)

In what conceivable world does this kind of nonsensical elision reduce the (negligible) shock some imaginary reader might feel at seeing the real word? To me it sounds like someone trying to come up with a way of speaking code in a child's presence. Now even if you stipulate that a child's ears need to be protected from this horrible vulgarity (as if they won't learn the full language of obscenity in their first 3 days in a schoolyard), no one in this thread or in any normal conversation requires this protection, and yet everyone uses these silly euphemisms anyway. I just don't understand it, especially in a thread like this which is understood to be read by adults and is in fact discussing the word "fuck" explicitly. I speculate there is some distant and tenuous cultural relation to the Orthodox insistence on not spelling out any name or designation of God in full (G-d, etc) and yet of course that pattern of usage applied to "fuck" is obviously blasphemous.

Kevin Nelson said:

One reason would be that the culture being depicted is very different from ours. The differences might well be reflected in profanity.

For example, let's say you have a culture that's very comfortable with bodily functions, but that's horrified at any blasphemy against its gods. I would find it pretty implausible for that culture to have profanity that worked the same as ours.

This isn't purely hypothetical. Chaucer used the word "shit," but based on the way he used it, he seemed to think of it as "just a word" and not a form of profanity at all. On the other hand, he disapproved of people blaspheming by saying "zounds!"

Highlighting things like that might actually be a pretty effective way of characterizing the society you're writing about.

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Well, to some extent, I think the writers who have their characters using language (including swearing) in ways that are similar to the way modern Americans or British people do are trying to establish that their cultures are pretty similar to our own, or at least similar to how we've been in the not so distant past. I. guessing it's an attempt to make the characters more accessible/relatable to modern readers, perhaps with the intent of making the departure from our values that emerge more shocking in contrast.

It's one approach to writing fantasy, and one that seems to be pretty popular in recent years, but it's certainly not the only one writers can take.

This site offers some translations of insults and swear words from around the world. It focuses on existing cultures and may not be completely accurate. But even so, it seems like there's a lot of commonality in insults. Nearly everyone has insults and expletives that refer to excrement (often far more creative than just saying shit), masturbation, sex that is deemed inappropriate, sex with animals, sex with one's female relatives and so on. Some are more strange and out there than others (to a US or British perspective), though.

It can be fun to create insults that are specific to the sensibilities of a fantasy culture, but that doesn't mean they'll be sanitized or less offensive to a modern reader.

Fry your [pr***] in the [s***]of fourteen goats then [f***] your [insert female relative] with it, would not have made my grandmother any happier to read in a book than the simple use of the Pr, S or F word.

And if you soften the translation by substituting words like [male member, excrement, have sex with] it will be just as "accurate" but become rather ludicrous. When you translate something, it's not just the denotation, but the connotation that you're shooting for, and since your readers are modern English speakers, it probably makes sense to use to pr word, s word and f word, because they carry more emotional impact than the more clinical terms.

Telergic said:

I don't mean to seem to attack anyone in this thread (because I understand that certain usage habits become ingrained), but I'm really wondering about this frequent use of "f-bomb" in a thread about the freedom to use the word "fuck".

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Good question, and I don't know why this is the case, but it seems to have evolved as a social convention akin to the bleeping or subbing of words in TV and movies. It's my understanding that we're supposed to avoid the too-frequent use of strong swear words in the threads that are not pw protected here on Aw. My interpretation might be wrong, but I'm taking this to mean that if I have a post where the same word might be repeated over and over, I'll "bleep" it once it's clear what I'm talking about. Some writer's forums don't allow any strong language in non pw protected areas. I may not agree with this either, but different site owners have different concerns, and of course, sites are also hosted, and sometimes hosts also have rules.

Some networks have rules about how many uses of a given word are allowed per episode, or even per season. Even the PG-13 rating allows one use of the word "fuck" per movie, from what I've heard.

Why a word should be deemed less offensive if it's kept below a certain count, I don't know. I'm sure folks with my grandma's sensibilities wouldn't like even one such use. But then, the dear old girl didn't have cable TV.

Telergic said:

I don't mean to seem to attack anyone in this thread (because I understand that certain usage habits become ingrained), but I'm really wondering about this frequent use of "f-bomb" in a thread about the freedom to use the word "fuck".

All euphemisms are more or less repellent to me (with the possible exception of "heck" as a replacement for "hell" because it's just so damn quaint and homely), but this I think "f-bomb" is particularly bad as is "f---" and similar smirking character replacements. (The silliest of which is no doubt motherf-cker, which you've probably seen many times. How is this any more acceptable without the u?)

In what conceivable world does this kind of nonsensical elision reduce the (negligible) shock some imaginary reader might feel at seeing the real word? To me it sounds like someone trying to come up with a way of speaking code in a child's presence. Now even if you stipulate that a child's ears need to be protected from this horrible vulgarity (as if they won't learn the full language of obscenity in their first 3 days in a schoolyard), no one in this thread or in any normal conversation requires this protection, and yet everyone uses these silly euphemisms anyway. I just don't understand it, especially in a thread like this which is understood to be read by adults and is in fact discussing the word "fuck" explicitly. I speculate there is some distant and tenuous cultural relation to the Orthodox insistence on not spelling out any name or designation of God in full (G-d, etc) and yet of course that pattern of usage applied to "fuck" is obviously blasphemous.

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If you "just don't understand it," you shouldn't be too quick to pronounce it nonsensical. And if you've already made your mind up that it's repellent, how can you say that you're "really wondering" about it?

In case you are actually interested in other people's viewpoints on this subject, I'll try to explain my thoughts. First of all, what makes a word count as profanity isn't its meaning. "Shit" and "feces" have the same meaning, but only one is profanity. They differ in what philosophers of language call pragmatic force--that is, they signal different intentions and/or attitudes. Words like "shit" and "fuck" have a distinctive and sometimes quite powerful pragmatic force that actually relies on the words being regarded as often inappropriate.

For example, compare the following:

1) The bus is late again.
2) The fucking bus is late again.

In terms of meaning, the two sentences are identical. But sentence (2) expresses stronger displeasure. Why? I submit that it's precisely because the word "fuck" is so often felt as inappropriate. The speaker is venting frustration by breaking a rule, or effectively saying "I'm angry enough to violate rules!" Maybe the rule depends on context--"fuck" might only regarded as inappropriate at certain times and places. (In that case, the speaker can superficially seem to break the rule without actually doing so.) It's even possible that the speaker doesn't think the rule is important or well-justified. But there is a social rule of appropriateness about the word. And breaking the rule can carry consequences, as you might find out if you ever tell your boss "Fuck you!"

Imagine a scenario where the word "fuck" becomes perfectly acceptable in all contexts. It appears in medical textbooks, papal encyclicals, and so on. ("The teaching of the Catholic Church is that fucking should occur only within the indissoluble bonds of holy matrimony....") In that scenario, the word "fuck" will no longer count as profanity. I think people would then stop saying things like sentence (2) above. If sentences like (2) did continue to be uttered, they would lose their special force.

Conversely, the stronger the rule is against the word, the more force the word will carry when it is used. In a society where saying "fuck" in public could be punished by jail time, sentence (2) would express powerful displeasure indeed.

Here in the U.S. in 2014, the rule against "fuck" has a lot of context dependence and is, all in all, of middling strength. Maybe you think the rule shouldn't exist at all, and maybe you're right--though without it, you'd lose a possibly important way of expressing yourself. Anyway, the rule cannot simply be wished away. The choice is whether to follow it or to break it. (Though it is possible to follow the rule while seeming to break it, by using the word in contexts where it actually is appropriate.)

In some contexts, it's not totally clear whether the rule applies. And I think that's the case right here on AW. So it makes sense to me that some people choose to play it safe. They type "f*ck" or what have you, because they don't care to break the rule and they feel no need to invoke the pragmatic force that comes from breaking it. That is quite different from thinking anyone requires "protection."

In other words, it's a reasonable personal policy to always follow the rule except when you want to be especially forceful. You can consistently acknowledge that breaking the rule carries no dire consequences. (It's almost as if society has said "People sometimes like to vent their frustration by breaking rules! All right, we'll create some arbitrary rules for them to break that don't really matter. Then people can have the fun of breaking rules without doing any actual harm.")

Personally, as you can see, I choose to use the words at issue without obscuring them. But if others choose to speak of "F-bombs," I see no grounds to complain.

I also see no analogy to the word "God." There is another English word, however, that does provide an analogy.

Anyway, as I see it, this thread isn't really about the freedom to use the word "fuck." The thread is more about the advisability of using the word, which is a different matter.

I'll add, as a grown-arse man with the mentality of a 14 year old boy, that I use the term F-bomb because I find it intrinsically funny, NOT because I feel I have to bowdlerise my own language. I can still be ear-meltingly profane when the need arises. Fuck fuckity fuck twat balls.

Lego Bono said:

Seriously though, I only put "curse words" in my novel when I believe it makes sense in the right context, if the nature of my characters require it and to have the impact I desire. But like others have stated, having an expletive every four words in literature I do find to be very distracting and just plain silly.

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Reasoning which could apply to anything in writing, really. Sex, action, eating, traveling, talking, death - we put those in our novels when we believe they make sense, if the characters require it and to have the impact we desire. We don't have expletives in every line any more than we have "Good morning" or "I love you" or "Shiny!" in every line. Anything used to excess is distracting and silly.

But then again, I don't think four-letter-words are intrinsically different from everything else, such that they need their own rules (or to be removed altogether).

I use them sparingly, and for specific effects, some of which have been discussed here. But they are like powerful spices. Too much will ruin a dish or a book.