Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Years ago I read a late-18th century poem in a unique copy held by the Houghton Rare Book Library in Cambridge, Mass. The eighteenth-century convention was to do exactly as you do and to substitute asterisks for letter in scatological terms and often in names (to avoid charges of slander, perhaps?), so that "shit" become "s**t" and Lord Bute, Lord B**e, and so on. In the event, I found in reading "Mineral Water, a Poem" that someone had, in a contemporary hand, filled in all the asterisks; "s**t" became "shit" again, and "c**p" "crap." You get the picture. I like to think that this was the work of some bored sixteen-year-old Harvard student, idling away an afternoon in, say, 1799 or so, restoring the English language to its proper muscular self and deriving an exquisite, guilty pleasure from the act. Chandos iginal Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Ian Watts Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 8:23 AM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: [Leica] Weird One Found on Leica Photo Net Steve Unsworth wrote: > > I believe it was the word with the '*' in it that caused the problem ;-) > > I can never understand why people do this, we all know what the missing > letter is, someone is going to be just as offended by a '*' as a 'u'. Canon, > Nikon and eBay of other popular '*' words, as I say I just don't get it. I don't as a rule like to see or use an '*' when the original letter will do. I will happily write common swear words - e.g. fuck - if the context seems appropriate (such as within an adult orientated list like the LUG). However, I had a feeling that in this particular instance somebody somewhere (probably outside of the UK or Australia) was going to be offended by my use of the c-word even though I was writing it as a point of information only. So I guess I inserted the '*' as a kind of polite acknowledgement that the word might cause offence. I would imagine that others have the same non-puritanical motivation when writing *bay, n*kon, etc. Ian Watts - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html