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Moderator Note to folks: Regarding the F word overuse


Hermit

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  • 3 weeks later...

Because language is a tool, and a skilled craftsman selects the right tool for the job. A well-stocked garage will definitely include dial calipers, straight-edges, fine files, sharp chisels, narrow-cutting Japanese pattern saws and the like . . . but it will also have things like sledgehammers and angle grinders. Sometimes a "bad" word is necessary for the effect that a writer intends. It's true that many people use them far too freely and indiscriminately--Hemingway famously said that "one *** **** is worth a hundred and a hundred are worth nothing"--but to insist that vulgarities must NEVER be used, and to recoil from them in shock, is just as immature as throwing several into every sentence.

 

The people who own and operate this virtual space, though, have made their rules, and we have the choice of abiding by them or going elsewhere.

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Avoid them not just because they are rules, but because they are meaningless.  The only words I can think of that can be used as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions without change are on a very short list, and it happens to have a one-hundred percent overlap with the list of "do not use in public" words. 

 

The fact that there is no single meaning to any other word that fills all these niches implies that any word so use cannot actually have a legitimate meaning at all, thus the word itself is not worth the effort it took say or spell.  It simply brought someone pleasure to use it, periods. 

 

I had an instructor once who insisted that words were crayons.  Nouns and verbs were the primary and secondary colors.  Adjectives and adverbs were the exotic mixes further out: the teals and hot pinks and shades of yelliw; the metalics of silver and gold and iridescent of the wildest order.  Used often and paired correctly these words will fill stories and conversations with lights and rainbows and great unearthed paintings that dwelled entirely in the mind.  Practiced regularly and routinely these words would turn your vocabulary into the long-sought box of 208 such crayons, or even beyond, leaving you with a box full of stories to tell. 

 

Profanity, of course, would give that same box of over 200 crayons, but they are all brown. 

 

You can chose to speak in shades and highlights and rainbows and tropical dreams, or you speak in Ups trucks.  The choice is yours.  But don't be surprised if after proving you have nothing to say, your audience loses interest and moves on. 

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Well, you guys certainly get intellectual, even down right thoughtful at times.

 

Meanwhile, I just had to edit a webcomic out of someone's post because it had the F word in it ...repeatedly. And I died a little inside as I rolled my rock back to the top of the hill again.

 

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”-Camus

 

Belgium you, Camus!

 

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Hermit said:

Well, you guys certainly get intellectual, even down right thoughtful at times.

 

Meanwhile, I just had to edit a webcomic out of someone's post because it had the F word in it ...repeatedly. And I died a little inside as I rolled my rock back to the top of the hill again.

 

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”-Camus

 

Belgium you, Camus!

 

If Sisyphus had been the kind of man to derive satisfaction from that sort of activity, he wouldn't have ended up in Tartarus.

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Long ago there was a newspaper comic that said

 

Quote

 

PEOPLE WHO USE BAD LANGUAGE

ARE IGNORANT *@#%HEADS

 

 

Can't find it now, of course.

 

Of course, one might demonstrate that it's less socially acceptable to use math than drop F-bombs.

 

"Go fractional exponent yourself, asymptote!"

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On 10/22/2018 at 6:33 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

If Sisyphus had been the kind of man to derive satisfaction from that sort of activity, he wouldn't have ended up in Tartarus.

 

Sisyphus was all about existence. Longevity. Cheating death. 

 

I imagine him happy.

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