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[artisan]

When did we start using the symbols on the keyboard to represent swear words? How come we use some but not others?

[incitatus]

When censorship took over big time...ie 19th century. Orwell used things like B-----. The symbols used tend to be the violent or exclamitive ones...ie !!!*** etc. More sedate punctuation would not have an impact, and impact is what swearing is all about.

[artisan]

But stars on the keyboard are tiny. Why do we use them?

[allen ives]

Why small asterisks? Well, I suppose if you used a large symbol it might detract your attention from the real letters, e.g. b@ll@cks is slightly less easily recognised than b*ll*cks. If orgs. like the answerbank.co.uk were a little less old-fashioned, we wouldn't have to resort to such tactics....

[incitatus]

and its not really old fashioned, its victorian. The victorians invented prudery anew. Older cultures (except for the commonwealth, cromwell being what he was) didnt have as much of a problem with it. And had some better terms of abuse. A good shakespearean standby...."thou sticky-fingered snatchpastry!"

[andy hughes]

I think we use '*'; and '!' because they were used in newspaper cartoons, and could be printed to any size required - but they do lose their impact with modern website and printer usage. As for the AB being 'old-fashioned', I think it is less a case of that, than being aware of the sensibilities of all its Visitors, who remain anonymous in most cases, as do their reactions to what the TV channels refer to as 'strong langauge'. It doesn't bother me, but I'm a long way from being the only one here - I wouldn't want to offend anyone, and neither do the operators of The Answerbank I'm sure.

[artisan]

Allen makes a good point, only we recognize both words-and if we weren't supposed to recognise them why the b at the beginning? I had a feeling it dates back to keyboards where a typist would type symbols by mistake and continue to type symbols.

[barra]

+ some email watchdog software in large companies detect swear words, so, in order to get jokes and anecdotes to friends via email without them being stopped, we need to use other symbols to fool the software!