(The best part of the headline is that the symbols don't make sense)
When I was in 9th grade, we read Fahrenheit 451 in reading groups. I loved the book. It's a great classic, dystopian sci-fi. Since we were reading it in groups, we had to read it aloud, and I remember my teacher saying we were allowed to read the swear words if we wanted to, but we were also allowed to skip them. He told us though, that as we read, to think about if it changed the meaning of the what we read.
I didn't read the swear words. Today, I still don't like profanity. I don't swear. But I remember wanting to be able to say that cutting out the swear words didn't effect the meaning of the story. After all, they were swear words. But the truth was, it did.
I know some of my followers are reading this, thinking that this post is a little silly, and they use profanity all the time in their writing. Others reading this may argue that authors only use profanity when they have a weak vocabulary and can't find better words to express themselves. That can be true, but the reality is, that's just not always the case. Making that statement is an over-generalization. There are actually more sophisticated reasons for using it, as I'll explain. But whatever your opinion on profanity is, I promise you'll learn something new about swearing by the end of this post--and how to use that knowledge to your benefit.
