The weirdest things bother me. I suppose everyone has their pet peeves. Today, however, what chuffed me was landing on the following:
Xc%(*y$e(wy!!!!!!!!!!
That’s very interesting… but what does it mean? Were it not attached to a post discussing a common writing device as an obscenity, as a failure of ability — You know “Has X become a dirty word?” — I’m not sure I would recognize it as anything other than a keyboard scramble. The problem is, as a visual representation of an obscenity, the example above offends.
Yes, I do believe there is a correct way to represent profanity, and I learned it from reading comic books.
There are two elements necessary to create the appropriate substitute profanity, length and symbol. Length is merely how many letter characters are being replaced in the original word with symbols. So for example if you were replacing the work dren or zark you will require four symbols. Similarly, frinx or grife require five symbols, and so on. You can find the meanings of these words, and many others here or, if you prefer, the Classics of the English Language.
Now, as for symbols, the only proper ones available are “caps lock numbers,” those symbols you get when using the caps lock on the number keys. The exception is the exclamation point, a common feature above the 1 on modern computer keyboards that replaced the cent symbol. (Why we haven’t eliminated cents in our daily lives is beyond me, because a penny doesn’t buy anything but a pocketful of dead weight, but I digress.) Basically, anything between the 1 and 9 keys are what you want, non-letter and non-punctuation symbols that serve as your stand-ins for the letters you are replacing. So the available symbols for cursing are @ # $ % ^ & *.
There are two reasons to avoid punctuation. First, you want to reserve them to actually punctuate the profanity in question. Second, adding punctuation in the middle of a word only confuses the reader. Parentheses are considered punctuation as well, because our eyes have been trained to see them outside of words, as something that groups something else. As a result, when used in the middle of a substitute profanity the flow of reading is interrupted while we try to figure out why the word has suddenly been broken down into an algebraic formula. In conjunction with this last point, since we do use letters to represent numbers in mathematics they shouldn’t be pressed into service in representing profanity as well.
Unless, of course, the above example is really a cypher. Hmm. I hadn’t considered that. No, I can’t think of any 11 letter profanities. At least not any with a repeating letter represented by (.
The order and representation of symbols is totally up to the writer, though consistency is always best. For example, if in one place you were to write “Get the #^@* out of here!” it only makes sense later to have the character ask “What the #^@* is wrong with you?!” Unless, of course, what they are saying is “What the &*#@ is wrong with you?!” because that’s a totally different thing.
As a final note, comic books have a wider set of characters to choose from because they employ symbols not found on the keyboard. The inward spiral, for example, or sometimes a simple smudge. But even then, the same rules apply, and when they are broken those word balloons don’t look right. You get the idea, but it’s like when a kid uses a word wrong and doesn’t realize it; the intent is undone by the ignorance. Unless you happen to think that sort of thing is cute. I can’t help you there.
There. I got it out of my system. Now it’s off to farking work.
Thanks. I needed this elegant lesson. I tend to go for the **** replacement of key letters, as in: you ****head.
I do think the @ symbol has been corrupted a bit, with its strong email ***ociations. ;)
Appreciated this enough to read more about you and boy books. I have a 12-year old… just wish I’d somehow managed to instill in him a love to read.
Exactly! I was just trying to substitute some profanity and it just looked WRONG. I knew there had to be a proper way and your post here was exactly what I was looking for. Glad I am not the only one that thinks about these kinds of things.
[…] profanity using an odd string of substitute characters on the keyboard. I decided to write a blog post about it, and about the “proper” ways one can use symbols to replace curse words in […]
This post was written in 2008, and a lot has changed since then…particularly due to Twitter. With the proliferation of #hastags, I would recommend that the first symbol NOT be # to avoid confusion. That shouldn’t preclude using a # elsewhere in the %&#@ grawlix (a.k.a. profanitype).
aw, &#@%!
while i think that’s an acceptable suggestion, i think anyone who confuses #^%@ as an actual hashtagged word because it starts with the pound sign (#) might have bigger problems with language to sort out.