Posted by
jefferson101 on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 7:42:54 PM
Actually, I pretty much think it's funny. I don't use foul language in my writing, unless really, really provoked, and have the ability to manage whatever circumlocutions are necessary to avoid doing so.
It doesn't particularly offend me. I was raised by and around USAF lifer Noncoms. Pretty much all of them were WWII vets, and they all talked just about the way one would expect a group of career Noncoms to, when they didn't think the kids were listening, or when the "kids" in question were old enough it didn't seem to matter anymore. I haven't heard anything new since I was about 15 or 16.
But whatever. I have occasionally run afoul of word censoring software in the past. I'm not allowed to use the word "put-atively" in a post here, without a hyphen, because the first four letters are a derogatory term for a lady of the evening in Spanish. (Papa, Uncle, Tango, Alpha. Go to the dictionary if you need to.)
Sheesh! I pressed 1 for English, folks. I've run afoul of that kind of other thing in other places. For instance, if one tried to make a joking reference to "Bush-ites", without the hyphen, I suspect that it'd object to that one because of the four letter Anglo-Saxonism for dung, too. But at least that's English.
I saw a blogger complaining the other day that one could not use the word "socialist" in his comment section, either, because the trackback spam filter was hitting on the word 'Cialis' in the middle of it.
I understand all of this on one level, but when we have to start filtering out foreign words in the middle of things, and suchlike, I fear that we're going to wind up censoring ourselves right out of half our vocabulary before we're done.
Funny. Sad, but funny.
And enough to make me load some more ammo!