Hey so I’m a college student and I’m writing a essay but I don’t know if it ok to curse because it’s not appropriate that’s what another student told me. That was only to the word bitches in my topic sentence. I fixed that. I’m quoting this person that i’m writing about and he uses fking to express or exaggerate what happened. I write it down like that fking not the actual word. I already emailed my teacher hoping they email me back before I got to turn it in. So he curses and I wanted to quote it but I don’t know if it’s ok. He songs have explicit lyrics and I wanted to quote them. I feel that cussing just makes his lyrics more powerful so I don’t want to take them out and take away that feel. I’m hoping someone tells me if it ok or not and what i can do if it’s no. Please help. Thank you to anyone who is reading this.
It’s risky in my opinion, but more acceptable if you’re quoting someone else and censoring it. Can you find another quote from said person that conveys the same general sentiment but is PG? There are certainly professors out there who would be outraged by this, but I’m guessing your average professor won’t care at all.
ok thank you for the feed back. would be more acceptable if it someone that’s famous?
yeah I think my professor won’t be out raged about it. She is very chill but this is territory i’ve never been in and it’s scary and i’m not sure.
I did in an essay I wrote for Carleton. It must’ve worked because I only had like a 3.4 weighted GPA in high school. But that’s a LAC. Mainstream universities might have more of an issue with it.
I absolutely would not take the chance. Unless you’re quoting a well known fictional character-- say, Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind-- or one you were specifically assigned to talk about, then I would not run the risk of offending the reader.
You can certainly say that the artist uses curse words to be more powerful without providing an exact quote.
I once had a kid send me an email at school from an email address that included the word “b****es.” I forwarded it to the dean instead of replying to the kid. I respect myself too much to be spoken to-- or written to-- in that manner.
Why use it? There are other ways to express yourself. I would not. You never know whois reading your essay and would think you would be able to find another form of expression.