Comment by xbmcuser
13 hours ago
* is used to give emphasis and show that they are using the word as curse word rather just calling it bad
13 hours ago
* is used to give emphasis and show that they are using the word as curse word rather just calling it bad
It doesn't read as emphasis to me. It reads like the person is trying hard not to curse, and they think "crap" is a curse word. It's a little bit adorable, like I'm reading a comment from an obedient child.
I guess you are not from the generation of texters. This how languages work we used to use * as a way to avoid getting censored it over time became a way to curse or give emphasis.
I'm definitely from the generation of texters and there was never any censorship going on with SMSs... yours must be a cultural or regional thing.
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Sounds like a generational thing.
I grew up texting. But in the 90s any profanity filters could just be turned off in settings.
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Am I, with around 30, in this generation? Putting * in words seems like self censorship to me. Still, might have a cultural component. German here.
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Is that a cultural/national thing instead of an age thing?
I've never had texts censored by texting providers, they're not supposed to read texts in the first place (at least around here).
I’ve been texting since it was first a thing (sms on Nokia phones) and no one I knows does this. We just say shit, fuck, and crap.
stop feeding nonsense to the masses
I think a string of non-alphanumeric characters would work much better here, like "Once you have allowed that proprietary @#$&% into your C++ codebase”
Leaves more to the imagination.
But this isn't perceived as emphasis at all. If I wanted to emphasize something, I'd be more likely to use something like *bitch* or something along those lines. Replacing a letter with an asterisk comes across as self-censorship, which is pretty silly - just use a different word if you're that uncomfortable with swearing.
In any context I've seen, asterisks are for wrapping formatting and said formatting it to add emphasis. So being in the habit of typing `emphasised phrase`, for italics - regardless of whether the platform parses markdown/similar formatting, e.g. SMS.
To have an unclosed asterisk replacing characters in a word? I've only ever seen that as a way to bypass censorship. This spans communications from people currently in their 40s down to 20.
i do this to put emphasis, i always type "h*ck".
(although it is a half-joke since it's definitely not a curse word imo)
like for example, c*nt?
Maybe more like p**p, as in "that cunt p**ped in my yard"?
I'll admit, it never once occurred to me that people might be using censored characters to provide more emphasis that a word is a swear, but I guess it does indeed do that, at least to the writer. Whether that comes across to the reader, and whether the writer cares that their intention was understood... I'm not so sure.
What about ^#%& as was traditional in newspaper comics strips?
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Hah. Yeah, I agree. It's one of those things I admit is `lost in translation` for sure.