Words, Words,Words, I'm so Sick of Words

So says Eliza Doolittle, and I agree. Local blogger Ken B. uses the Worst Word in the World here and another forbidden one here. Recently, the Language Log had an essay on just these two words. They observe:

"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n—-r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."

The notable feature here is the use of two different avoidance characters: asterisks in "f***ing", hyphens in "n—-r". I don't recall having seen this sort of typographical differentiation before.

Interestingly, Ken asterisks one but spells the other out fully.

I kind of like dirty words. If you don't, you can ignore this post.