I was a junior in high school, and came from the "wrong side of the tracks". Though I was the exception (not a druggie, not a dropout), I routinely used the coarse vulgarities of my peers. As we were having a discussion backstage at the community theater one day, one of my fellow castmates (about twice my age) suggested I clean up my vocabulary.

But she didn't do it to be condescending.

She did it because she knew that I was smarter than that, and had the rare ability to outperform most of my peers. She suggested some alternative phrases that didn't dip into the coarseness that was so common among my colleagues.

And I am forever grateful for that favor.

You see, while the occasional "F-Bomb" may be dropped on the Senate floor or in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, vulgarity is, in fact, the "scarlet letter" of the underclass. Routine usage of words commonly accepted as obscene will mark you as "lower class" quicker than clothes or the car you drive ever could.

This point was further underscored in one of Bill O'Reilly's books when he pointed out that you will NOT hear obscenities as a routine part of speech at ANY of the Ivy League universities. You see, in this instance, the language sets you apart, it defines you, and, in many cases, it limits you.

I've never been ostracized from a group because I didn't swear enough. And I've worked among miners, mechanics, plumbers, construction workers...the sort of people often associated with swearing. But I HAVE in the past found myself marked because I swore TOO much.

The lesson applies to JU in the minority of bloggers who can't string together two consecutive sentences without obscenity. They are set apart, and one can even see some of their allies distancing themselves from their comments.

The purpose of liberal use of obscenities is to shock. Frankly, I use them selectively, as it can occasionally help emphasize my point in text blogging, where such things as emphasis and sarcasm can otherwise be hard to convey. But making them a routine part of your speech causes the words to lose their shock value and the blogger themselves to become offensive.

So to those who are inclined to overuse obscenities, I will encourage you to try to find more creative ways to phrase things. You're smarter than that.

Or ARE you?