Re: [Leica] Weird One Found on Leica Photo Net

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca>]

Chandos said:

>>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.<<<<

Dang! I've been caught! ;-)
ted
- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chandos Michael Brown" <cmbrow@wm.edu>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 6:40 AM
Subject: RE: [Leica] Weird One Found on Leica Photo Net


> 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
> 
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