I think we should be discouraging that kind of self-censorship for all but the worst words. Not only do people start to use it for ridiculous political posturing (e.g. "wmen" or "gmers") but it just makes what you're write ever so slightly harder to understand. And for what benefit?
Censored words are much more likely to be ambiguous. I wasn't referring to that specific example but now you mention it, p_n_s does take a fraction longer to understand than penis.
And no-one is talking about taking away people's freedom. You can write all your emails in all caps if you want, but we can discourage people from doing that.
In a previous sentence they mentioned TTP, then they mentioned P-n-s. I thought this was another acronym of sorts. Like "Posts not sexy" or whatever. I spent a couple seconds to figure out what it meant, failed, and just moved on.
Figured out what it was supposed to mean from the replies.
Comments
I think we should be discouraging that kind of self-censorship for all but the worst words. Not only do people start to use it for ridiculous political posturing (e.g. "wmen" or "gmers") but it just makes what you're write ever so slightly harder to understand. And for what benefit?
How is the original comment harder to understand?
If there is one freedom people have is to control their language, wether to avoid certain words or to utter words that other find silly.
Censored words are much more likely to be ambiguous. I wasn't referring to that specific example but now you mention it, p_n_s does take a fraction longer to understand than penis.
And no-one is talking about taking away people's freedom. You can write all your emails in all caps if you want, but we can discourage people from doing that.
In a previous sentence they mentioned TTP, then they mentioned P-n-s. I thought this was another acronym of sorts. Like "Posts not sexy" or whatever. I spent a couple seconds to figure out what it meant, failed, and just moved on.
Figured out what it was supposed to mean from the replies.
They are welcome to avoid certain words, and I am welcome to criticize it.