A Point for Profanity

I am not a proponent of profanity. I don't have any very good reason for it; it's mostly because I was raised that way (good work mom and dad). Anybody who reads my blog will find profanity very hard to find. However, it is in there. In fact, you can find all of them by doing a search for whatever word you want to see.

I will swear in real life, but still not as much as most people my age (unless I'm in a particularly rotten mood). I know all of the common reasons to avoid it. It's filthy. It's crude. It's ignorant. There are always better options out there. All of those arguments are crap. The only question when it comes to word use in writing is: does it fit?

If you're doing a job interview to be a systems analyst, profanity just doesn't fit. Similarly, if you are writing an academic essay, four-letter words just don't fit. The same is true if you're writing a children's book or if you are writing wishy-washy love poetry.

However, that does not mean that profanity is never useful. These words still hold a great deal of power, especially when written down. People say these words all the time, but speech is ephemeral. Writing stays written. You stare at it and it stares back at you, refusing to go away. This power can be used to great effect. Consider this scenario:

Roland is a 15-year old boy, living in a big city. He is currently sitting down in an alley with his back against a grimey brick wall. His school friend Chris walks by and sees Roland looking bad. Roland has salty streaks down his face. His clothes are frayed and dingy, and he is hiding a black eye under the brim of his cap. Chris asks Roland what the problem is. Roland tells the story of the last 24 hours, where his friend since the first grade died in the crossfire of a gang shootout while bringing home a carton of milk and some apples, where his father walked out on the family in a fit of rage, but not before picking him up off the ground and throwing him across the apartment and landing head first on the corner of the table, where his mother hasn't stopped crying for the last three days because she had a miscarriage, which probably happened because she can't go a day without drinking a fifth of rum and smoking a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. After this story, Chris extends his hand and offers to play some basketball with him. Roland snorts, buries his head in his crossed arms, and says. "Fuck it."

In that situation, there is no other phrase that fits. Something classy or witty would be worse because it would be unbelievable. Some philosophical diatribe on life and happiness would be preposterous. No, this character only had one line that could fit, and it was the one he said. Those two little words perfectly cap the scene and describe how Roland is feeling. Anything else would be inefficient to say the least.

The only real restriction with profanity, aside from having it fit the tone of your writing, is frequency. All words have frequency limits. If you use the word 'really' more than once every two or three paragraphs, it loses what little meaning it has. Profanity is even stronger, which means it loses a lot of its power even faster. Personally, I suspect that a full-length novel doesn't need as many as five major profanities. Beyond that, it's just cheap, no matter how well it would otherwise fit.