**** me, this is difficult.

Those of you with filthy minds may have already filled in the missing word in the title of this article, whilst the rest of you can't even think of a word.   Which raises an important point - what is a swear and what is acceptable language these days?  Now obviously on a corporate blog, you shouldn't cuss, but I've never seen a swear list defined anywhere.  We've discussed this in the office around having a swear box, but the people who might perhaps use fruity language from time to time feel that perhaps there should be a sliding scale of seriousness for example a C is more expensive than an F but an S should be cheaper in comparison.  If you refer to the BBC list of swears, the most obvious are listed, and there is even a ranking of least to most acceptable.  Some words don't appear (a male chicken for example) but some might consider them to be unsuitable for use, even if they are in peoples everyday vocabulary. 

A good friend of mine works in the billing department of a major utility supplier, managing their software tools, and one of his projects a few years ago involved creating a script that would spit out new and unique account numbers for any new customers signing up to the company.  Because the billing account could be alphanumeric, they didn't want the system spitting out any account numbers which might be taken out of context, for example 1ISAFOOL124.  So he literally spent 3 weeks compiling a list of all possible swears that the system could generate, including researching lots of foreign word lists with swears included. 

Now, The company I work for (AFAIK) doesn't have a word list like this, and I'm pretty sure that Sharepoint which we use on our intranet doesn't filter content.  But even if it does, who has the final say as to what is appropriate and what is not.  I suppose language is a little like comedy - whatever you say,  the chances are someone somewhere will take offence and make a complaint.  But as we've been taught from our equality and diversity training, have a quiet word with me first and I'll be sure to try and correct whatever has upset you.

NB.  The word above is 'PING'