Give me smut and nothing but...

Patrick Ishmael at The News Buckit answered an interesting challenge, this week. InstaPunk asked the question of which side of the blogosphere more frequently used George Carlin's "seven words you can never say on television," and by what sort of margin. The News Buckit posted the numbers.

I was not terribly surprised that the left side came out as the heavier users, but I was rather shocked by how wide the margin was.

And I can't help but wonder how different the 'sphere would have been if the left side had had the sorts of English teachers I'd had in my formative years. Granted, my grammar and punctuation occasionally slide into red-pencil-land. Everybody has momentary lapses, and some of my moments last longer than they should. But one sentence I learned from my excellent instructors, over all those years, was this:

Profane language is generally indicative of a dearth of vocabulary, an inclination toward laziness, a failing of imagination, or all three -- so cut that sh*t out!

As a point of fact, strong language has its uses. But overuse of any given tool wears it down. Saving such for a time when nothing else will do, the impact of its use is that much greater.

I can count on one hand the number of times I heard my father use old-fashioned, monosyllabic Anglic terms under stress. Even telling dirty jokes, he found other, more entertaining ways to describe events. Usually, the stories were funnier for the adaptation, too. This I can safely say, because I'd have heard the stories from my uncle or some other person who used the traditional coarser terms, and, while I laughed at the jokes, I remember Dad's versions to this day (and laugh still harder when he retells them to them young'uns who've never heard such, before, from a white-haired feller with a pocket protector).

It seems that control and restraint have an unusual power to influence thought. Over time, more people tend to remain listening to the ones who are able to speak clearly, distinctly, and to the point (without embellishment of either florid terms or sordid). The rest, with their poesy and tantrums, will eventually lose the ear of all the reasonable adults in the room.

It can't happen soon enough.