Family-Friendly Forum
I have had a few complaints about swearing in the forum, even though the posts were legitimate questions about the use of slang and swearwords. There aren't that many threads dealing with these, but some of them do contain language that somewould consider to be extreme and taboo.
If people could avoid using the words in the titles of threads, so that they don't appear in the index, it would be a great help and would avoid causing offence to people who don't want to see these words. Like many people answering, I use asterisks in the body of posts too when answering these questions.If people could do this,we would be able to discuss these things without causing offence to anyone.
Categories: Editorial Policies, UsingEnglish Content
Well, it is a language forum. (It seems that it would be impossible to never cause offense to anyone.)
~Tarheel
Agreed, but at least if we can avoid titles with swearing, the index pages will be OK.
We can edit thread titles as soon as we spot them (I think I've done this a few times). I generally use asterisks in any swear words although I'm aware that there are a few words which aren't classified as swearing as such in BrE, which I am gradually learning seem to be more offensive in AmE.
It's just trying to strike a balance. As a British English speaker, I have been surprised by the genuine level of offense felt by some speakers from other countries, even by what I would consider to be fairly harmless slang, so I started using asterisks in all my answers years ago.