Expletives et. al.

[Christy Dawn Langley <GRLANGLE -at- ECUVM -dot- CIS -dot- ECU -dot- EDU>]

There is a time and a place for profanity. Online in perhaps a chatroom
of people who think that perpetual use of expletives makes them "cool"
would be a better place than the techwr list. Personally, I find such
utterances of f**k, et cetera to be used more often to intimidate than
not. Usually, it is those people who are insecure in themselves who use
expletives. Why? Ask them. I ASSUME it is because they are angry about
their inferiority and want to make others as uncomfortable as they feel.
People I have had brief encounters with have automatically assumed I was
a very white, pristine daddy's girl and used expletives to intimidate
me. At that time, their tactic worked. Now I wish people who constantly
curse would just SHUT UP & read a dictionary. There IS a better word out
there! I'm not intimidated anymore, just annoyed.

That is just one theory. Anyway, I can't see where profanity has its
place ANYWHERE in a tech writing manual or document. It is not
mainstream language. Unless your audience can appreciate words like f*ck
and they actually have relevance in the document, I say they don't
belong. And besides, the people I know who use this type of language
wouldn't be reading a lot of the documents tech writers create.

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                     + Dawn Langley                          +
                     + grlangle -at- ecuvm -dot- cis -dot- ecu -dot- edu            +
                     + http://www.ecu.edu/~grlangle/stc.htm  +
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