Look, this isn’t the first time this has come up.
Once my best friend told me he was going to have to stop hanging out with me if I kept swearing so much. We were in fourth grade. I promised him I would knock it off. Eventually, I found cooler friends, and left his prissy bitchass behind.
I came by my swearing honestly, on my mother’s side. Famously in our family, Mom would tell us kids, “Your father wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if he had a mouth full of it.”
Once, on a walk with my dad when I was about twelve, he gave me a talk about swearing, logically explaining how if you swear (like your mother), you’ll upset some people unnecessarily, and if you don’t swear, you won’t. He told me I would have to choose, one way or another.
I remember thinking: “Goddamnit, I’m going to swear.”
When I was young, I swore to seem grown up. Now that I am older, I swear to: Indicate than I am not fucking around. Tell people who think they’re reading another fucking milquetoast corporate communication blog that they are not. Make myself laugh.
I know my teenage daughter swears, but not around me unless it’s necessary to the story she’s telling. That is fine with me, though I’ve told her not to be one of these jagoffs who swears around little kids (which I have thoughtlessly been, from time to time).
Meanwhile, I still have people bothering me about my swearing! One, anyway. But an important one! I got a lot of nice notes about something I wrote last week here, and only one piece of criticism. From my old pal Tony Judge, who has been telling me since we met that I shouldn’t swear so much, especially in my writing. Or maybe it’s my late father, talking to me through Tony.
This is Tony. He’s had a career and life as colorful as this photograph would suggest. He’s no suburban square.
Nevertheless, my swearing upsets him. Read this email exchange, from the bottom up.
I told Tony:
Writers don’t poll their readers about which language they prefer. Come the fuck on.
Over 20 years and 3,200 Boots posts and many other writings you are the only reader who has ever given me this feedback and I’ve had other readers actually say they love that I swear.
I may be all wet about this too of course. You might be the silent fucking majority.
And I said I would ask, because I realized I was actually curious about what I would hear.
And so I am.
Dave, I would never offer an opinion on this unless you asked; I would just not read people I don’t wish to read. But since you asked, and since I do read your blog daily, I’m not personally offended. Although I rarely swear myself (Just don’t mention that time I tore my MCL while tobogganing with my son), I accept it as a literary and oratorical device.
That said, I agree with Tony that it can be jarring when you swear in seemingly gratuitous circumstances. But maybe it only seems gratuitous to me. I don’t know. I wish you would swear less, but it doesn’t keep me from reading you. It would keep my wife from doing so, though. So there’s that.
Fuck no
My favorite whiskey glass has the words “calm the fuck down” inscribed across the front. It captures my preferred response to this post.
My wife complains when I swear, especially around the kids, but I argue that a well placed f-bomb can be used to great effect. It’s spoken, though. In the moment. When I write (and I have time to think) I prefer to find more artful ways to convey my feelings. So I agree with Tony, but I enjoy reading your posts regardless because you say important (and interesting) things.
I love reading your articles.
Simple me: I do not curse.
I speak fluent trucker,
with a constuction accent.
LOL
Here’s the thing about writing. It’s YOUR writing. Not anyone else’s. If you want to swear, then by God swear. If you want to write completely in passive sentences, then please do so. Want to totally forego punctuation vis-a-vis Cormac McCarthy? Who am I to tell you differently.
If I like it, I’ll read it. If not, I won’t.
My only request is don’t write something you think I – or anyone else – might like. Write something you like. And by fucking happy about it.
I totally fucking agree with your friend Tony, who, by the way, looks pretty fucking cool. Well, not totally. But he does make a good fucking point. Sometimes your swearing seems totally fucking gratuitous. Well, not totally.
Swear on I say – I love a bit of gratuitous swearing even more than appropriate curse words. I find it human, and often funny. But then I’m Australian, and everyone swears here. Visitors are appalled by us.
You go on ahead and swear your god damn fool fucking head off. As someone who constantly has to watch his mouth with kids around the house, and who, in the time of COVID, misses going to work most of all because it has deprived me of a blessed sanctuary of salty language, I get a kick out some well-placed cussing in any written piece. It makes me smile.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Of course, you should probably weigh this opinion against the fact that this is coming from a guy who thinks that Stephen King is a modern day Charles Dickens.