TGIF, Dear Blog Readers!
At this point, I am really sorry that I decided to count the Fun Fridays in Roman Numerals. Oh, well.
I haven’t had much participation in these writing exercises lately, and I’m finding it challenging to pick a topic each week that will resonate with people. To date, I think the Bus People exercise was the most successful. If you have ANY ideas for future exercises, please feel free to post them as comments or send me an email.
But for today, I still have to come up with something, and I was thinking about forbidden words. Books keep getting banned for using words that are no longer politically correct. While I never think books should be banned or “updated”, as they tell us a lot about society and the environment during the time period they were written, there are words that make me cringe.
What word(s) do you wish would be outlawed, and why? What word makes you cringe? It doesn’t have to be a hateful word, per se. My mother is allergic to the word “panties” for some reason, and as such, prefers to refer to them as “pants”, which has caused a fair share of confusion.
As for me, my word is the N-word, although I think Tom Sawyer should be left just the way it is. I realize rappers have taken over this word as some kind of empowerment thing, but I hate it. I really hate it. I wish everyone would stop using it.
How about you, dear readers? What word(s) is on your hate list?
I don’t like my main characters saying f**k. They only say it when no other word fits the scene and I weigh its use heavily. (In my completed book, the protagonist says it 4 times. My WIP protagonist will probably never say it.)
Other characters in my books? If it fits them… Sure. But never my main characters.
Banning books for their words is as silly as banning songs for their words. I think that there are words that no longer have a contemporary need in conversation – notably an N word recently in the news.
When I’m reading or writing I prefer to not use profanity as a crutch – very few people outside of the trucking or petroleum industry use the f word for all literary roles. Sometimes saying a ‘bad word’ is acceptable because it fits in the story or the character but that should be the sole reason for using it.
My husband is an Indian – but you have to say native American (not true, Native North American would be more precise), First Nations is a government tag which applies only if you have status and Aboriginal covers it all but many people think of Australia when you say it. We tell Indian jokes at our house, Ukrainian ones too because we ARE both of those things. Are we wrong? To some probably but really when Man Vs. Wild has a warning about ‘Aboriginal nudity’ I just about collapse laughing – I NEED that warning too! It’s FUNNY and it hurts no one. Is it a bad thing?
I think the only words truly on my hate list are those used for hate – the lovely c word used for women, n word, i word, r word…anytime they are used for hurt and for hate they are on my list.
Keep up the Fun Friday’s Holli, I enjoy them even if sometimes I don’t get to post my activity I still do them! Maybe you can move to Elvish or Troll for your numbering for a while? Mix things up! 🙂
A fun exercise would be to share a quote or common saying and see how we each, your dear readers, view them from our own place in life. Could be interesting!
Pedagogy….. DESPISE that word. To me it speaks of everything pretentious about acadamia and you will never NEVER see me use it in anything I write (excluding moments when I am using it to be ironic or arrogant on purpose). And what the hell does it really mean anyway? (Rhetorical question…. and BTW… “rhetorical,” is a word I LOVE along with dichotomy and pretentious).
I generally also dislike when people use any $100 vocabulary words especially when something simpler would be more effective. But again, the exception to that rule is when it is being used for deliberate arrogance or irony.
I hate when swear words come out of my 7 year old’s mouth. He thinks its funny but it just sounds sooo WRONG.
I have many words I would like to ban, but the following two come to mind first and foremost…
Two words I dislike are “ALWAYS” and “NEVER”.
I can’t recall how many times my ex use to say to me, “You ALWAYS say that.” (Actually no, I say that sometimes, but not always) or “You NEVER do that.” (Yes I have done that many times, but not recently). They are absolutes, and I try very hard not to use absolutes in my day-to-day interactions and conversations with people.
My kids are also bad for using ‘always’ and ‘never’. “Mom you let him go on the computer first!” or “Mom, I get to do that!” I’ve pointed out on more than one occasion that that isn’t the case and if they look closely they will see.
Unfortunately I have to confess that I have used always and never from time to time, but I try to catch myself when I can. ;0)
Not sure why but some of my quoted words in the previous post were deleted when I posted it…this is what that paragraph was supposed to look like:
My kids are also bad for using ‘always’ and ‘never’. “Mom you ALWAYS let him go on the computer first!” or “Mom, I NEVER get to do that!” I’ve pointed out on more than one occasion that that isn’t the case and if they look closely they will see.
Weird…. I guess blogger doesn’t like absolutes. My ex used to say that about me. That I used Always and Never too often… Too funny.
I hate advertisers. Not the word “advertisers” but the fact that they make up words for their products and try to make them sound scientific when actually they don’t mean anything at all. Now containing XXX. It does not!
Wow, this was an AWESOME response! Thanks so much for all the banned word suggestions. MM, you had my head spinning trying to figure out what “i-word” and “r-word” are. Totally agree about “c-word”…that’s a nasty one.
I love the suggestion about using a quote to start a discussion, too. Now I just have to find a good one.