A note regarding language

AW Admin · Jun 22, 2019

We live in frustrating times. I'm certainly frustrated, constantly.

But:

When Mac turned off the AW censor we expected writers could use all their words effectively.

As she notes in The Newbie Guide to Absolute Write:

ON LANGUAGE - You might notice that this board doesn't currently **** out curse words. That's deliberate. This is a writer's board; we certainly should each have the minimal control necessary over our own language to know how civilized adults speak in public. We strongly urge you to use that knowledge and control.

Different rooms may have a different tolerance level for salty language. If in doubt, choose a different word. Otherwise, prepare yourself to have your post deleted, or to be asked to edit your post.

Our intention in turning off the profanity censor was never to make profanity more widely exploited. Quite the opposite: the intention was to throw the onus of responsibility for your language back into your very own laps.

When and if you choose to curse, please consider your words and choose them deliberately and with great care. Excruciating care, in fact. There may well be that rare occasion when a carefully chosen curse word is both effective and appropriate.

Please don't attempt to exploit that.

I'm a Medievalist, and a Philologist. I'm not afraid of words. I am in fact a frequent speaker of Anglo-Saxon and Yiddish in the pursuit of invective.

Unfortunately, I'm noticing an increasing practice of invective towards public figures in ACE & H.

I'm referring to the increasing commonality of using curse words in thread titles, and referring to people as various forms of excrement.

I've tried soft-deleting posts and in-thread requests.

I'm not getting people to work with me.

I'm being dismissed; this makes me testy.

So here's a thing you need to know:

I'm running AW, and modding ACE & H, while trying to make a living.

Having to deal with multiple complaints about language directed towards public figures is taking its toll on my time.
Moreover, I'm not willing to be sued because a handful of members can't write without resorting to fecal vocabulary.

I'm no longer asking. Clean up your language.

Stop calling people dog shit, or human excrement or pieces of shit, etc.
Post like writers with the world's most voluminous language at your disposal.

I more often than not don't disagree with your evaluation, just the expression.

Please do better. You're complicating my job.

Shakespearean Insult Generator

ElaineA · Jun 22, 2019

Providing the Shakespearean insult generator is a stroke of genius. Thank you, Lisa.

Sorry if I've added to your troubles. I've tried to use more asterisks recently, but that's a lazy tactic. I shall try to be better than a lumpish, boil-brained minnow from now on.

AW Admin · Jun 22, 2019

ElaineA said:
Providing the Shakespearean insult generator is a stroke of genius. Thank you, Lisa.

Sorry if I've added to your troubles. I've tried to use more asterisks recently, but that's a lazy tactic. I shall try to be better than a lumpish, boil-brained minnow from now on.

I can add similar generators for Old Irish and a handful of others . . .

MaeZe · Jun 22, 2019

I changed my thread title and post this morning when I took a second look at it. Next time I'm angry I'll wait before I post. Sorry.

AW Admin · Jun 22, 2019

MaeZe said:
I changed my thread title and post this morning when I took a second look at it. Next time I'm angry I'll wait before I post. Sorry.

We all have bad days, and this is a really frustrating era.

Thank you so much for changing it; I saw that you had when I came to check because of complaints.

I really appreciate it.

The thing is, Mac and I are blamed for members' posts, so people like you who own their own words and fix them make a huge difference.

frimble3 · Jun 22, 2019

I would like to apologize as well - asterisks are not a disguise. I should have chosen more carefully. (Every time I get a 'private message' I worry that it's a mod telling me to do better/knock it off).
BTW, those other insult generators might be, er, useful. Nothing broadens the mind like more information!

Kjbartolotta · Jun 22, 2019

It gets hyphy in here sometimes. How could it not? And I've certainly let my errors pile up, while trying to do better and being well aware I'm not always gonna. It's hard.

Still, for myself, and I'm sure plenty of you, the CE&P&H room is my lifelife, since it's one of the few places I can go for opinions from people I actually trust, agree with them or not. So thank you, as always, to Lisa, Mac, Ari, Reddog, and everyone I see here every day. It's always gonna be messy, but it's good to remember that we're lucky to share this place together at this moment.

VeryBigBeard · Jun 22, 2019

Thanks for saying this.

I don't regularly complain about posts. But I read this forum, when I do read it, to get insight into how other people see the world. I understand the frustration, but it's frankly a lot less interesting to me, as a reader, then a post which brings light instead of heat.

Ralph Rotten · Jun 22, 2019

I always appreciate forums where they don't get all Puritanical over every swear word.
But ad hominem attacks have no place in polite conversation.

ElaineA · Jun 22, 2019

Ralph Rotten said:
But ad hominem attacks have no place in polite conversation.

So we're only to refer to the policy of, say, keeping children unhygienically caged, left sick and hungry for weeks at a time, but not make comments about the people actually planning and executing the policy?

Stick that in a deep, dark, rat-infested oubliette, along with the term "polite conversation," which is code for "maintaining the status quo." I've agreed not to use potty words to describe these people, but I'm going to "ad hominem" the hell out of those shameful, evil souls. In this particular case, as in Nazi Germany, the policy and the people are inextricably intertwined.

AW Admin · Jun 22, 2019

Ralph Rotten said:
I always appreciate forums where they don't get all Puritanical over every swear word.
But ad hominem attacks have no place in polite conversation.

One of the things that annoys me is the misapplication of rhetorical terms.

While we do expect members to adhere to The Newbie Guide to Absolute Write, it's worth noting that the argumentum ad hominem fallacy is when we "disparage the character of the
speaker, instead of attacking his arguments"; to borrow ElaineA's reference

ElaineA said:
So we're only to refer to the policy of, say, keeping children unhygienically caged, left sick and hungry for weeks at a time, but not make comments about the people actually planning and executing the policy?

Stick that in a deep, dark, rat-infested oubliette, along with the term "polite conversation," which is code for "maintaining the status quo." I've agreed not to use potty words to describe these people, but I'm going to "ad hominem" the hell out of those shameful, evil souls. In this particular case, as in Nazi Germany, the policy and the people are inextricably intertwined.

As long as members are specific and factual in their references, we're not engaging in the argumentum ad hominem, which would be a disparaging reference to someone's person or character without a substantiating reason.

As Richard Lanham put it in A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms ad hominem means:

1. Abuse of your opponent's character.
2. Basing your argument on what you know of your opponent's
character.
Churchill's reputed description of Atlee may exemplify both: "He
was a modest man, with much to be modest about."

I'm ok with a reference to pustulant necrotic sadists who place children in cages as part of a general strategy to again have concentration camps in America. The FCC isn't going to object to that.

Chris P · Jun 22, 2019

This isn't aimed at anyone, nor am I holding myself up as a perfect example of how to post, but I recall (what I remember as--I can't find the source) Kurt Vonnegut saying that swearing gives people a reason to stop listening to you. Although many if not most of us lean similar ways politically and share common concerns about the direction of the country and world, I need to remember that not everyone here does. There lies the opportunity to present a case to someone who disagrees. When I read an opposing viewpoint or about a subject I don't know much about, what things make the message one I will consider, even if I end up disagreeing? I try to form my own message in the same way. "So-and-so is a barge-polling doodyhead" doesn't carry much weight with me, so why would I use the same tactic?

ETA: Thanks Lisa for the thread and position on this. We represent AW to the world, and AW (the company I keep) represents me as well.

nighttimer · Jun 26, 2019

We live in a profane time. :censored

War and violence is widespread. Refugees are drowning like rats as they try to escape from poverty, brutality and cruelty. Women go missing in the black hole of sex trafficking. The weather is morphing into something unpredictable and alarming. The ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the oceans are filled with our waste and filth and toxins and plastic.

Every day deals are cut and money changes hands to make things worse, not better for those who are not privileged or considered important enough to care about.

Every day there's a new shooting spree or hideous murder. Every day yet another rich guy gets away with victimizing women, men and children. Animals are tortured, filmed and presented on social media for other sickos to get off on.

The Nazis and the Klan and the White Supremacists are coming for the kikes, the niggers, the spics, the fags, the dykes, the sand niggers. A same-sex couple walking down the street is literally taking their lives in their hands.

A woman walking down the street has to pick up the pace to avoid the catcalls, escape the yelling men demanding she show her tits and cringe as a horny molester puts his clammy hands on her on a crowded bus or subway. A little boy who likes to play with Barbie dolls instead of G.I. Joe is being punched in the chest by his father screaming at him to "take it like a man and stop being a little faggot." That little boy may grow up to be a healthy and happy heterosexual man on the outside who is repressing his hatred and violent tendencies that may one day emerge in a terrible and bloody spasm and all because daddy couldn't deal with the idea of his son being a homosexual.

Right now in a office a woman is being raped. Right now a man in prison is being raped. Right now on a film set a child is being raped.

We have a thief, a sex maniac, a serial molester, a likely rapist in the Oval Office. We have one political party that closes a blind eye to this sort of depravity and another that sits by feckless, impotent and useless. There are no checks and there are no balances. There's only grifters, cheaters, hustlers, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, and racists. The bad guys are winning and the good guys are losing--big time.

If you are even slightly conscious of the desperate days we're trying to survive, tThere's not a lot of reasons to be optimistic. Nobody is coming to save us. Not the FBI or the Boy Scouts or the Marines or the Pope or Captain America. Nobody is coming. There's nobody to save us but us.

Oh, and I'm a Black man living in a White man's country trying to protect my wife and son and daughter as I try very hard not to give up on this entire country and just pull up stakes and start all over in another place in another country because this one is swirling down the toilet and I am very afraid I might lose my mind if anything were to happen to my family. That doesn't make me special.

I'm still a writer and a pretty good one on my better days, if I can be immodest. I know how to construct a sentence. Get the subject and predicate right and tight. Put the verbs and adverbs and nouns and pronouns in all the right places. I can turn a mean phrase. My words can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. They can cut with the precision of a surgeon's steady scalpel and heal with the loving touch of your sweet grandma-ma.

But sometimes I don't feel like being diplomatic. Or tactful. Or polite. I don't want to play nice. Sometimes I just wanna call something what it is and if it offends or rankles or annoys, then it was probably meant to and I'm cool with that.

So I don't have to compare my enemies to excrement. Human, animal or otherwise. I don't have to call those who hate and despise me the scum of the earth. I don't have to be graphic and explicit on what should happen to child molesters, pedophiles, rapists, killer cops, cop killers, and other worthless wastes of perfectly good air.

I don't have to do any of those things. But sometimes I HAVE to call an evil motherfucking piece of shit an evil motherfucking piece of shit. Certain things must be called out and identified as what they actually are.

And why? Because when Mark Twain said, "Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer," he was right.

These are those certain, urgent and desperate circumstances we're trying to navigate our way through and if it's not, it will do until the real deal moseys along. If an epithet or a cuss word slips out, that should be expected, if not necessarily welcomed or appreciated.

I reserve the right to seek the relief that comes profanity. I also accept responsibility for my words as well as the ramifications that may come with them.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

:Soapbox:

pharm · Jun 26, 2019

The strong language isn’t the problem. People wilting at the notion of strong language used to describe and decry hideous injustices are the problem. “Civility” handwringing over vocabulary has been the refuge of the truly profane since time immemorial.

FWIW, calling a horrible human being dogshit isn’t defamatory. Nor can it possibly be an FCC violation on a web forum. The FCC literally can’t object to that.

AW Admin · Jun 26, 2019

nighttimer said:
But sometimes I don't feel like being diplomatic. Or tactful. Or polite. I don't want to play nice. Sometimes I just wanna call something what it is and if it offends or rankles or annoys, then it was probably meant to and I'm cool with that.

pharm said:
The strong language isn’t the problem. People wilting at the notion of strong language used to describe and decry hideous injustices are the problem. “Civility” handwringing over vocabulary has been the refuge of the truly profane since time immemorial.

FWIW, calling a horrible human being dogshit isn’t defamatory. Nor can it possibly be an FCC violation on a web forum. The FCC literally can’t object to that.

You have no idea what you're talking about. The FCC doesn't issue warnings. They issue a Takedown. That takedown more often than not involves taking down the server. I've had to deal with this; I do know what I'm talking about.

Moreover you're on a privately owned server.

Let me be clearer:

1. I'm not willing to have the server confiscated for any member's linguistic foibles.

2. I've had it up to here dealing with issues around language, specifically, particularly ACE & H. Dealing with this issue is cutting into my income earning time.

You do what you gotta do.

I am not asking. I'm telling you what won't be tolerated.

I'm not messing around with this any more. Members are more than welcome to complain to MacAllister.

MacAllister · Jun 28, 2019

nighttimer said:
We live in a profane time.

War and violence is widespread. Refugees are drowning like rats as they try to escape from poverty, brutality and cruelty. Women go missing in the black hole of sex trafficking. The weather is morphing into something unpredictable and alarming. The ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the oceans are filled with our waste and filth and toxins and plastic.

Every day deals are cut and money changes hands to make things worse, not better for those who are not privileged or considered important enough to care about.

Every day there's a new shooting spree or hideous murder. Every day yet another rich guy gets away with victimizing women, men and children. Animals are tortured, filmed and presented on social media for other sickos to get off on.

The Nazis and the Klan and the White Supremacists are coming for the kikes, the niggers, the spics, the fags, the dykes, the sand niggers. A same-sex couple walking down the street is literally taking their lives in their hands.

A woman walking down the street has to pick up the pace to avoid the catcalls, escape the yelling men demanding she show her tits and cringe as a horny molester puts his clammy hands on her on a crowded bus or subway. A little boy who likes to play with Barbie dolls instead of G.I. Joe is being punched in the chest by his father screaming at him to "take it like a man and stop being a little faggot." That little boy may grow up to be a healthy and happy heterosexual man on the outside who is repressing his hatred and violent tendencies that may one day emerge in a terrible and bloody spasm and all because daddy couldn't deal with the idea of his son being a homosexual.

Right now in a office a woman is being raped. Right now a man in prison is being raped. Right now on a film set a child is being raped.

We have a thief, a sex maniac, a serial molester, a likely rapist in the Oval Office. We have one political party that closes a blind eye to this sort of depravity and another that sits by feckless, impotent and useless. There are no checks and there are no balances. There's only grifters, cheaters, hustlers, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, and racists. The bad guys are winning and the good guys are losing--big time.

If you are even slightly conscious of the desperate days we're trying to survive, tThere's not a lot of reasons to be optimistic. Nobody is coming to save us. Not the FBI or the Boy Scouts or the Marines or the Pope or Captain America. Nobody is coming. There's nobody to save us but us.

Oh, and I'm a Black man living in a White man's country trying to protect my wife and son and daughter as I try very hard not to give up on this entire country and just pull up stakes and start all over in another place in another country because this one is swirling down the toilet and I am very afraid I might lose my mind if anything were to happen to my family. That doesn't make me special.

I'm still a writer and a pretty good one on my better days, if I can be immodest. I know how to construct a sentence. Get the subject and predicate right and tight. Put the verbs and adverbs and nouns and pronouns in all the right places. I can turn a mean phrase. My words can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. They can cut with the precision of a surgeon's steady scalpel and heal with the loving touch of your sweet grandma-ma.

But sometimes I don't feel like being diplomatic. Or tactful. Or polite. I don't want to play nice. Sometimes I just wanna call something what it is and if it offends or rankles or annoys, then it was probably meant to and I'm cool with that.

So I don't have to compare my enemies to excrement. Human, animal or otherwise. I don't have to call those who hate and despise me the scum of the earth. I don't have to be graphic and explicit on what should happen to child molesters, pedophiles, rapists, killer cops, cop killers, and other worthless wastes of perfectly good air.

I don't have to do any of those things. But sometimes I HAVE to call an evil motherfucking piece of shit an evil motherfucking piece of shit. Certain things must be called out and identified as what they actually are.

And why? Because when Mark Twain said, "Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer," he was right.

These are those certain, urgent and desperate circumstances we're trying to navigate our way through and if it's not, it will do until the real deal moseys along. If an epithet or a cuss word slips out, that should be expected, if not necessarily welcomed or appreciated.

I reserve the right to seek the relief that comes profanity. I also accept responsibility for my words as well as the ramifications that may come with them.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

Yup. I wouldn't want it any other way, either.

What we're objecting to is lazy and ineffective reliance on profanity to the detriment of actual writing.

A note regarding language

AW Admin

ElaineA

All about that action, boss.

AW Admin

MaeZe

AW Admin

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog

VeryBigBeard

Preparing for winter

Ralph Rotten

ElaineA

All about that action, boss.

AW Admin

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters

pharm

profoundly de minimis

AW Admin

MacAllister

'Twas but a dream of thee