Bl*p! Is it time to grow up and leave the asterisk behind?

I'm not suggesting the humble asterisk be consigned to the bin entirely but this post concerns expletives: we all know what those 'bleeped' letters are and the words they complete, so why do we, in some cases, bleep them out and in others not? On TV here in the UK, certain words are permissible after 9pm but sometimes the programme makers (or censors) bleep them anyway. On occasions one guest on a show will be bleeped and another not. 'Oh my God' is a wildly offensive blasphemy to many people yet I've never heard it bleeped. 'Bitch' is fine sometimes but bleeped out of songs on the radio here. In print though, as editors we either follow a style or use our own judgement (or both) and in the trade press I've worked in for 20-plus years, we haven't let much through at all. The occasional mild 'bloody' or 'damn' seems fine but we've never had anything submitted with the F word. Not too strange given our professional subject matter. But elsewhere, the Sun newspaper proudly displays a pair of naked breasts nearly every day on page 3 yet would censor words like 'crap'. To me it's entirely illogical. After all, words are only offensive if taken so, and that always falls on either the person using them in a deliberately hostile manner or the offendee taking such words personally. Considering most of the 'bad' words we use today are derived from words which were not offensive when they joined our language, why do we now steer clear of them? Why is the F word, which originally meant to hit something, seen as such a bad word? And does it matter? Finally, magazines like Empire (which could easily be read by children) print such words in full, yet I've seen other glossies which don't. What's the difference? When is it not offensive? I think it's time to stop being fudged on this: language is beautiful and every word in it is as valid as any other! From the

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