A column on writing from Editor & Publisher April 25, 1981.

Fulsome but printable

To go or not to go with a dirty word? It depends.

Every wire editor knew what to do with the report of the radio spot of presidential candidate Barry Commoner, "Carter, Reagan, and Anderson, It's all bull****." Answer: They asked the managing editor, who asked the editor, who asked the publisher.

Before the Nixon tapes, not many editors asked such questions because papers didn't print loathsome language, even in the anti-Viet Nam stories, when blue words were often themselves the news. In those simpler days, if an indecent expression was quoted by a reckless reporter, it never slid past the desk. (Occasionally, a letter was dropped in the composing room from SHIRT SALE--no editorial laxity.)

Since the Nixon tapes, however, some dailies have at rare times printed obscenities (vulgarism for body parts and functions) in direct quotes, nearly always when a person in authority has used them. Profanities (hell, damn) have been all right for years on the air and in print.

But profanities and obscenities aside, not everything is printable, although notions of what is and is not taboo have changed radically. Within memory, was intimate with decoded into the forbidden had intercourse with. Assault or criminal attack was used instead of rape. We would report that a woman suffered "a fractured skull, five broken ribs, and severe bruises. She was not criminally attacked."

But accurate language, while now permissible, is potentially offensive. There are few guidelines. Herewith a beginning, some grist for for your coffee break. Has anyone a relevant stylesheet? ^{Footnote 1}

• Primary and secondary gender characteristics. Though once off-limits, the formal words for these are now required in a report: The incidence of breast and testicle cancer is rising.

Sex and gender. Lesbian and bisexual used to be beyond the pale. Now Ann Landers reports to us weekly on transvestites. Family papers printed Mrs. Harris' slut and whore in the recent Scarsdale divorce case.
 
In certain crime, spy, and divorce stories, synonyms are welcome so that the now-printable [sexual] intercourse is not overused. All vernacular is taboo. That grand source, J.I. Rodale's Synonym Finder, revised by Urdang and LaRoche, Rodale Press 1978 edition) offers coitus, coition, sexual relations, copulation, fornication, making love, among others, that also seem to me printable in a daily.
 
Or choose from the long lists under sex in a thesaurus, such as Roget's International Thesaurus (Crowell, 1977), which also supplies specific legal charges. Sodomy, once barred, has been popular in my local press of late.

• Dialects. Use only dialect words that you understand perfectly. When you are interviewing someone who uses expressions in a language you do not full understand, do not season your story with the authentic flavors of this tongue unless you know how salty they are.


• Double entendres. Writers are supposed to be mindful of the undermeanings of words. In the 1980s, mindfulness is not growing easier. A generally virtuous expression that not long ago would have brought a secret smile in only a few places now raises a universal smirk. Sixth-grade teachers have asked me to rewrite sample lessons lest their charges dissolve into giggles for the day.
   
  Offensive words include gay, ball, grass, trip, speed, rubbers, come, straight -- probably none unfamiliar to E&P readers in all their meanings. But sixth graders?

See also #7 Taboo Language, plus list of other sources.

^{Footnote 1} I never did receive a style sheet on taboo language from any newspaper.

Ethel Grodzins Romm is a writer and editor currently living in New York City. She is the author of The Open Conspiracy: What America's Angry Generation is Saying (review) (auction with cover), several of the Strategies in Reading workbook series and others. She appeared in the film Paranormal: Science or Pseudoscience? She has written columns on language for Editor & Publisher, The American Bar Association Journal and many others. She is currently working on a book on management.