William Power of The Wall Street Journal writes about the business newspaper’s changing policy in terms of vulgar words in its stories.
Power writes, “As you might have noticed, we now allow the printing of most vulgarities if they are in direct quotations and our news judgment is that the quotation is important to include because it gives insight into how the person communicates, his or her depth of feeling on a subject, or character. Thus, an executive referring to a ‘shit storm’ or a politician (guess who) vowing to ‘bomb the shit’ out of Islamic State’s oil operations.
“We should continue to use vulgarities quite sparingly and only in direct quotes, not in our own voice.
“Only a few words are offensive enough that they still require a Barney dash—which is a long dash following the first letter of the obscenity, a style named after former Journal editor Barney Calame, onetime arbiter of decorum—which means that we let readers know the word without spelling it out. These Barney-dashed words include:
● racial epithets
● f— or f—ing
● c— (vulgar slang, female anatomy)”
Read more here.
