You don’t write “Fuck”
Or “asshole”, “bastard”, and the whole family of unsavoury words.
You think you do: You use it in speech colloquially, to add emphasis to words, to show aggression, to seem like you don’t give a shit. You type it down when you’re sad or angry, when you just got dumped or failed a test, you throw them around in frenzied internet flame wars.
But think about it, when was the last time you wrote it down. I wrote it in my notes and it was strange. It wasn’t liberating, it wasn’t life-changing. It just nudged my attention to something about us: people.
You write in exams; you write notes to your co-workers, to yourself; you write birthday cards, get-well cards, romantic cards. How often would you write to someone telling them to “fucking get well”, or to “get this shit done, you bastard”, other than to your closest friends, and maybe not even then? Sure, you write it here and there, but certainly not at the rate that you do in speech or text.
I like that.
I like how it shows that even with vulgarity-prone speech and internet habits we, in our writing at least, still have some notion of control in our expression.
