This is an interesting thing that's come up... When you’re writing for your chosen audience, how do you approach the swearing (if you use it)? We tend to be very attached to our own styles of swearing, but other audiences might not get the same meaning that you intend.
For example: "Bloody wankers!"
Outside of Australia or Britain, that just doesn't have the same meaning.
There's a HUGE problem with swearing though: it’s the childish censorship in all normal dictionaries that either end up with their complete removal and denial of existence (words that are often older than many of the others in the dictionary), or just having most of their meanings, history and definitions cut out.

So how do you approach swearing (do you go for the lowest common denominator), and what words and meanings have you come across that you prefer to use and why? It's helpful to have a good store because it can be hard to find them anywhere else sometimes.
Here are some of mine:

*Wanker is still a good word, even if some people don't get it, it just has a nice sound. Maybe the fact that not everyone gets it in the same way makes it even better. -of course it literally refers to someone who masturbates, but is generally applied to either an idiot or someone who is extremely up themself.

*cunt; I will pretty much never use, not directly anyway. It's just too blunt. You know it means vagina... if you don't, then you should!

*cock is a good one. It has the old double meaning, it's a good sound too. Actually it has at least 4 meanings, which is pretty nifty: Penis, rooster, someone who struts around with puffed up pride like a rooster, someone who's being a dick.

*Dick: well that's not bad, you can play with the meaning being someone's name, someone being an annoying bastard, a penis, or as an oblique reference to sex.

*Arse. Arse is fun. It comes from the original meaning for the end of the digestive track... You can guess which end! A good word for a fool or a bottom.

*Ass: the genteel version of arse, it obviously came into use for the similarity of sound and the fact that Donkeys are silly. It has always been used classically as a good joke on the two things: Bums and donkeys! I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that it's considered so evil and offensive by some people... It's been used quite harmlessly in classical literature for a very long time, (with full intention of the buttock connection!).

*Fanny: Well this one isn't really that rude. The original British meaning is of course vagina, but it's so colloquial that it's only rude to children. It's sort of a sniggery kind of word, used in sniggery jokes, because it's also a popular woman's name. But it's been used classically too, notably: "Fanny Hill or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure", the usage is obvious. I always found "the Famous Five" funny as a kid; two of the characters are called "dick and "fanny".
The American meaning is bottom, and I don't know why... I know it came about a little later, but not much else. It's sort of a twee, old people's term there though right? A nice word for bum.
This gives it hilarious possibilities actually.

*Bum; a fun word for bottom, but in the US it also means a homeless person or a loser. That interesting possibilities... but it's hard to reconcile them.

*Fuck; a good simple word for sex, or a very banal swear word... It's rather unambiguous though. A good boring, general, all-purpose word. It's very old, so it's surprising that it's still considered so offensive.

Then there're all the fake ones. Mina Lunga of Gnoph goes very well with "Keck", Farescape made "frell" quite popular... Father Ted worked wonders with "feck". You can have fun with Fork too. "Blank" is a silly one from the 30's. :-D

anything that goes beyond Crap and Ass I just write #%&=$ just to be safe its just easier for my lazy bones

once I've been called a "Bloody stupid bint!" by somebody online...

and to this day I still wonder what a Bint is...

I tend to swear in my comics just like how I swear in my everyday life. So "fuck" gets put in there alot. It really is just a mindless throw away word to fill in space and express a little bit of extra anger or frustration, not really as a way to insult someone else.

Ass, just...well, rolls off the tongue nicely! hehehe. "Get off your lazy butt." vs. "Get off your lazy ass." Butt is so much more abrupt an ending to a sentence, while ass can linger there for a while as the ss's slip off your tongue. It is also hilarious for a person with a lisp, which I slightly have.

Shit, for some reason always seemed more like an insult to me. Calling someone a shit is just so demeaning. No one likes to be waste or excrement. Well, some people might. So shit is a word I use when I'm really expressing an insult in my writing.

Being female, cunt is a really derogatory word in my mind. Using a perfectly normal and fine reproductive organ as an insult is really getting to the core of gender disparity in our society and this makes me unhappy. Same goes for calling someone a dick, but it has more of a connotation for someone just beeing a jerk/asshole (also another fine word)

Adding the word Bloody to anything makes it much more full of beautiful imagery.

But, all and all I'm not very creative when it comes to swearing. Is it necessary? Not really. Is it fun. Definitely.

Aurora Moon
once I've been called a "Bloody stupid bint!" by somebody online...

and to this day I still wonder what a Bint is...

I'd say it equates to wench. Wench is a good one too.

It's British slang for a woman or girl, but it is always disparaging and offensive and signals the user as lower class and unrefined. It’s also now rather dated.

The word is Arabic for a daughter, specifically one who has yet to bear a child. It was in common use as a slang term during the first and second World Wars among British and Allied servicemen stationed in Egypt and neighbouring countries.

Sir Richard Burton was the first person to use the word in English, in his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah in 1855: “ ‘Allah! upon Allah! O daughter!’ cry the by-standers, when the obstinate bint of sixty years seizes their hands”.

Oh and Ozone? You sir are a rake of the highest order.

well i write what the charactor sounds and acts like,.
if i got a rude charactor they would use curse words often
and if the char is respectfull they use the safe versions of the words or
wont say anything bad at all but most of all its needs to be tastefull
not put in like crazy or every other line but not never because everyone curses and it needs it to fill out personalities and vocabulary better

Well, VP doesn't have constant swearing....but it's in there. I try to put in only a realistic amount, and at the right times.

Some characters swear more than others though. Like Raff swears a LOT. Orlock doesn't really...he slipped "cunting" once so far...and Jack just recently called Topaz a dipshit! *GASP* :o I don't see that word very often anymore....

Probably the words I use most often are "damn" and "shit". Don't really know why...I guess just because to me, they're common.

I've always had mixed feelings about adding swears to my comic. That might be because I was brought up in a family that swore minimally. Sure, someone might slip out a "damn" or "shit" but it was usually only during really stressful arguments. :roll: I've always felt very awkward around adults who swear a lot in front of children or even infants. They are pretty good listeners, ya know! Anyways, enough about child psychology, I like to add some swears to my comic. It's being realistic. I mean, normal people don't go around calling people "You stuipdhead!" Gawd, that's almost as tawdry saying "Your face!" or "Your mom!" which is somehow popular among young people.

Ha ha, I have always liked the insult "tart." It always made me think of the food and I thought it was pretty funny calling someone a dessert as an insult. Also, I find it pretty funny when people combine swears to make new ones. My friend used to be really good at making some up. Sadly, I can't think of any at the moment.

To be truthful, I'm not fond of swearing. But I'm a hypocrite because I swear occasionally so my opinion shouldn't matter. Haha.

In my comics, I usually just put in the swears as I remember people saying them. And if it suits the mood. I'm not gonna stick in a swear in a happy fun moment or something. I want it to sound natural though, so I'll use swears if it fits the emotion the character is feeling.

The only swear words I've ever really used though are "shit", "bitch", "damn", and "fuck"; the original four swears in my vocabulary. xD

Originally, I didn't really care one way or the other. Around the early 30s in my comics, I began to realize where I wanted to take the characters and the direction I wanted to go. While I could do a Penny-Arcade strip, throwing in the constant f bombs and away with the continunity is sometimes too painful for me. While I cuss like a sailor in real life, I realize that to reach a more broader audience, I might not want to go too far, unless I really feel it is neccesary. Of course, towards the end of the first 50 strips, I got itchy, and tried to be offensive and rude, talking about hardcore fucking and porn, but it didn't do anything for me or anyone who read.

To me, I think a "Bender-esque" character works fine, which is, say ass, shit and damn all you want, and thats it. Maybe even a J.C. but I try not to do that.

As some of you already stated, it's all in the character themselves. My own negative and pessimistic Nathan will cuss constantly while the dim stupid yet loveable Nick will not.

It depends.

Why does every one think damn is a swear word? Is it an american thing? And is goddamit considered a swear word in america cos it ain't in England.

I quite fancy being a rake actually ^_^
How about "rapine" then. That's a rare one for being used to describe a person rather than an action. It carries a very strong meaning... But I can't call anyone a rapine.

What about Cad? A cad is a dishonourable bloke, but I don't know where it came from.

Swearing is what some characters just have to do. Tank Girl is a good example of a comic that goes the whole hog. Novel writing offers a lot more leeway.

As for the styles of swearing, a lot of Europeans and Slavs seem to imagine that their swearing styles are extremely creative and clever, but they mostly just come down to variations on the “your mum” line I find. Plus, they have the same general words of naming people after body parts and excrement… Two good ones I remember are “Pichka” and “Korotz” (pussy and dick). I notice that calling someone a name based on “Vagina” in European/Slavic countries a lot more popular than calling them something based on “penis”.

Being bilingual definitely has its advantages when it comes to swearing. :D In Singapore, a dash of choice hokkien (chinese dialect) expletive adds alot of colour and local flavour to the comics.

From local funnyman comic artist Daniel Wang :


He has a funny spoof of Star Wars at:
http://www.sgdanielwang.com/comic2/

And an overall view of the Singlish cussing vernacular we have in Singapore (taken from Singapore Sexual Slang wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org]):

"Singlish is the mongrel spawn of British colonisation and the street language of the subjugated, developed over almost 200 years. Only a handful of common English sexual slang words are used by the English-educated in Singapore. The less educated often use the slang words of their mother tongue in a barely passable Singlish sentence. The following are unique concoctions influenced by native languages.

Cuckoo bird / Bird-bird / bird / birdie - penis, especially of small children; direct Singlish translation of the Malay and Chinese dialect slang words for penis.

Brother / small brother - penis; direct Singlish translation of the Singaporean Mandarin slang word for penis.

Balls! / Balls to you! - Singlish version of "Bollocks!"; probably a direct translation from the Hokkien "Lān-pha!"

Chicken - female prostitute; a direct Singlish translation of the Cantonese slang word for prostitute.

Duck - masculine male prostitute; gigolo, a direct Singlish translation of Cantonese slang.

Steam - to be sexually aroused; to have an erection.

Talk cock - to talk nonsense; probably derived from a combination of the proper English "cock and bull" and the Hokkien "kóng lān-chiáu ōe".

Sell backside - to prostitute oneself; to compromise one's dignity, especially for pecuniary gain; also used to rib someone who has bent forward with his buttocks above the level of his head.

Itchy backside - used to describe a person who has nothing to do, but of his own volition performs a spurious act which usually lands him in trouble.

Carry balls / ball carrier - to be a sycophant / obsequious person.

Bang balls - to be frustrated, especially when the outcome of an event is contrary to what one expects; probably a direct translation of the Hokkien "tū lān".

Fuck - slang of army origin meaning "to scold". Examples:

* "Recruit, you better wake up your idea, OK? Don't let me fuck you!" (You'd better improve your attitude, recruit, or I'll give you a good dressing-down.)
* "He damn idle one, that's why always kena fuck". (He's very lazy, that's why he's always getting scolded.) Kena is a Malay-derived word indicating the passive voice, i.e. that the subject has been the recipient of an (usually unpleasant) action. "One" is usually used as a suffixed possessive particle, a direct translation of the Chinese "de" or the Malay "punya", but in this case functions as an adjectival particle.

Basket - euphemistic substitute for "bastard"; also used to express disappointment, as in the English "Drat!" or "Damn!"

Tiger show - slang, probably of army origin, for a live sex performance.

Fruity euphemisms - the names of local fruit are sometimes used refer to sexual organs:

* banana - penis
* papaya - breast
* rambutan (a red, egg-shaped, hairy fruit) - testicle"

Dubba G
Why does every one think damn is a swear word? Is it an american thing? And is goddamit considered a swear word in america cos it ain't in England.

That's nothing. My brother told me that a colleague of his at work (and originally from England) got called into Human Resources and almost got fired by a manager for saying his paycheck was "niggardly". :roll:

You can't even use the RIGHT word without getting into trouble.

.: SpANG! :.

DoubleY, that was great. I shall have to somehow fold Singapore slang into the amalgam of suburban ebonics, archaic terms, high school Spanish, Clockwork Orange dialect, bizarre pop-culture fragments, and plain old words I made up that compose my personal colloquialism vocabulary. Plus that guy is a pretty darn good cartoonist, I'll say.

As for my favorite curse word, there's the word that my sister and her friend Megan invented, "fugnut". (My sister: "It sounds naughty... but it's not!!!") Also, there's words that sound like they should be filthy, like "scruples", "brunch", and even "tender". (Not because "tender" sounds filthy in itself, but because you always associate it with something kind of awkward and nasty. "Ooh, that spot in your back looks a little... tender." "...Eww.") And let's not forget common everyday double-meaning words that everybody laughs at in school assemblies:

CLASS SGA PRESIDENT: With the money we're trying to raise from the gift wrap fundraiser, we plan to erect a statue commemorating our brave janitor Ms. Percy, who tragically passed away last year of a brain tumor.
EVERY MALE IN THE AUDIENCE: Heh heh. She said erect.

And, you know, there's always the outdated insults from the turn of the century and further back that so many people pass over these days. These words need some love and attention, people; let's not pass them over. For example, which is better?

1. "Suck my balls, bee-yotch!"

Or...

2. "I'll take no guff from you, you cheeky young jackanapes!"

I'd take number two any day. It's way more inventive, plus you can run off in the time it takes for your victim to actually figure out what you just said.

~IJ

Oh man, IanJay, you totally reminded me of my English class last year, where we were doing a unit on Shakespeare. He had the best insults.

"Thou beslubbering fat-kidneyed fustilarian!"

You can find a pretty good site for Skakespearean Insults here

"Thou frothy elf-skinned hugger-mugger!!"

haha, that site is funny to play around with.

For some reason I just don't swear. I probably should, seeing as I read and hear swearing all the time, but it just hasn't become a habit, so my comics usually stay swear free except very occasionally.

Wankers is funny because Americans just don't seem to get that it's a swear word - at least none of the Americans I know :P

Someone I know got in trouble for using the word 'Pedagogy' once, despite the fact that it is in no way a swear word (or related to anything that could be constituted as rude/offensive).

Jadedwinter71

SpANG!

Dubba G
Why does every one think damn is a swear word? Is it an american thing? And is goddamit considered a swear word in america cos it ain't in England.

That's nothing. My brother told me that a colleague of his at work (and originally from England) got called into Human Resources and almost got fired by a manager for saying his paycheck was "niggardly". :roll:

You can't even use the RIGHT word without getting into trouble.

I hate that so much, I'v got ISS for that crap so many times...

most recent was for the use of the J word >_< which technically isn't a swear word.

me: "ahh common Mr. Davis don't Jew me like that! its was 1985 not 86"

teacher: "young man thats a warning! one more word like that outa you I'll send you to ISS"

me: *mumbles* "Skanked again.."

the result was me getting ISS. When I brought up the 1st amendment that got me suspension for lack of co-oporation or some bullshit like that. personally I thought my rights were jitted there but who knows... maby they were right.

I just don't understand why people say we have "freedom" of speech then turn around and punish you for it!!

so much bull in the united states right now >_<

Ah, I think you missed my point.

ahh come on Mr. Davis, don't Jew me like that! its was 1985 not 86

... This IS a derogatory statement, and IS politically incorrect. True, it's not a swear, but you are stereotyping a culture by saying that.

The word "niggardly" means small or paltry. It's not racist, because (even tough it may sound like it) it is not a racial slur. The adverb form niggardly was formed in the sixteenth century from niggard, the name for a miser or stingy person.

.: SpANG! :.

Yeah, but who's gonna know that today? The difference between your antiquated curses and my antiquated curses is that yours kind of sounds like it's racist, and the context doesn't help much either.

So you'll have to start using some other phrase, you dankish tawdy-gaited canker-blossom.

~IJ

I don't know, niggardly didn't seem that old fashioned to me, it's still in use, it's not obscure and it doesn't sound like "nigger" to me. I mean, niggardly isn't even an insult, it's just a synonym for paltry, mean, parsimonious, cheap, trifling, miserly, stingy, tight-fisted, etc… but probably a nicer term than most of those. You could use “Jew” as one of the synonyms too, but that would be offensive. Don’t do it.

One of my favourites is "Bugger". It’s an old term for sodomy, but in the modern day it’s just a general purpose swear word, mostly used as an exclamation of frustration by anyone from young children to elderly grandmothers. You might say “Well bugger me!” or “bugger me blind”, “Bugger this for a joke!” or just simply “bugger!”.
An affectionate term for a child is “bugger-lugs”. But that may be just because of the similarity of the word to bug, as in insect.

Still, for a word for sodomy it’s come a long way into acceptability! Especially when you think that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for a charge of Buggery.

-love all the Singaporian combo words. ^^

I don't swear, swearing is for nasty people!

So say the parents, and as they read my comic...



In my writing I usually use very Australian swear words - especially the word fucken, which I use quite liberally now.

Ian Jay
Yeah, but who's gonna know that today?

Uh, people with (or accessibility to) a DICTIONARY, maybe? :P

Why should the well-versed fall victim to the illiterate, or at the very least ignorant? You ruttish, swag-bellied miscreant! :wink:

.: SpANG! :.

Dubba G
Why does every one think damn is a swear word? Is it an american thing? And is goddamit considered a swear word in america cos it ain't in England.

Yes and yes. I don't know WHY it's a swear here, just like I don't know why 'hell' is a swear...

....goatish milk-livered harpy.

i'm all for swearing, but for use in comics I almost can't use it. I don't feel the need for making my characters scream out fuck or whatever.
Crap is a word I'll use in certain situations for a comic. It'll always stick in my mind: the Christmas episode of the Simpsons where Homer sets up the decorations. Bart: it's craptastic.

that sort of joining of words is hilarious. Things you wouldn't expect to hear right away. Like Ian Jay said, make em think to give you time to run away.
Or just witty little coments:

My favorite for insulting
: You fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down, didn't you?

: *puts hand over someone else's head* The brainsucker is starving.

: You hoodle head!

: You are some sad, sad nymphomaniac, aren't you?


But then there are expressions of terror, embarrasment.

Swearing falls under lotsa categories... but it's more of putting them into comics in good taste.

To me its an easy question to answer. Only use words approved of by the people you *want* to read your comic. If you're hoping to see your strip in the newspapers someday, stay away from anything stronger than butt. If you want a huge online fanbase, let the fucks and shits and goddamns fly. And always keep in mind that if you write like you talk, you will only have readers like your friends (which is great if you have lots and lots of friends, by the way).

I swear all the time, sometimes I don`t know it.

Though in a comic, it`s always relaxed swearing. You know, stuff you would say in a conversation like "hey, fuck you man." Not the kind that a 13 year old playing on Xbox Live or some Instant Message shit would say, Like "Hey fuck you you mutherfucking dipshit, go suck my hard cock bitch." or of course any game fourm.

I use Tasteful swearing, like the kind used in The Godfather, Scarface, and The South Park Movie. Not the kind used in The Devil`s Rejects.

Hey wait a minute, the word fuck caused a lot of controversy in the South Park Movie, yet when one episode of South Park said "Shit" more than 100 times on TV, no one gave a damn, funny that.

.: Myxomatosis :.

i really dig "preacher"/ennis cussing...those really long and funny sentences that illustrates a beat down in a lyrical language.

like : die you mother f**** son of a silly bastard

or

eat my soft s*** you slimy c** sucking son a of a w****

what tha fuck are ya doing here you big evil sumbitch?!!
hehehe :twisted:
havent seen you for a long time, man