I've been known to use some salty language. I don't generally judge it, but one of my kids swears more than I'd like. I've pointed it out on more than one occasion. My grandfather used to say that swearing was the result of laziness; not taking the time to find the right word. Maybe, but sometimes a well-placed expletive is exactly the right word. That being said, I've also caught myself plenty of times, having just sworn, thinking that it sounded awfully crass and out of place. Pointless. Lazy.
We've all heard the phrase "swears like a sailor," but my experience led me to question that saying, at least a little.
At the very end of my Army life, I participated in a joint exercise on a Navy ship. For about a week I sailed the Atlantic, slept in a little coffin, and ate in the officers' mess. Naval officers eat off of China (at least on a ship), and they have an "etiquette" officer, a junior officer, who enforces the rules--the proper manners--of the mess. For the ground pounders on that joint exercise, used to going to the field and eating out of a thick plastic bag with a brown plastic spoon, we were bemused. I pointed out that etiquette in the Army was figuring out whether your commander liked it, or didn't like it when you swore. This Navy Lieutenant JG laughed and said that with all of these guests aboard, he had to relax the rules a little. Most of my commanders liked a well-placed F-bomb, though some pretended to be a little more demure.
Which leads me to my grumpy old man thought of the moment: spoken language is different than written language. In written language swearing is rarely appropriate. Not never, but rarely. I find that in writing it is better at conveying levity than seriousness--often the opposite of its usage in spoken language. And I find that expletives on this board are more often than not crass and pointless, not effective or well-aimed. Some might even say lazy.
