Professionalism vs. Personality: Is Swearing Ever Okay?

Today, I had the incredible privilege of attending a webinar on social media techniques led by Lewis Howes and Sean Malarkey. (I will probably build on some of what I learned in later posts, but that is not the focus of this post.) During the course of the presentation, Sean used a blog post of his titled “How I Get Massive Amounts of Sh*t Done” as an example, and he happened to mention that this post received a bit of backlash from readers who felt that the use of the word “Sh*t” was unprofessional, followed by an even bigger outpouring of support for Sean’s choice as a reasonable way to add personality to his content. Which got me thinking: Where do we draw the line between professionalism and personality?

I, for one, was not in the least offended by Melissa Leo’s cursing in her Oscar acceptance speech—she was in the moment, and I enjoyed seeing her carried away by the thrill of victory. I far preferred it to the myriad other dry, bland speeches in which winners simply thanked everyone they’d ever met in their lives. And, as the actress told Ellen DeGeneres a few days later, the F-word is a part of her vocabulary, so she wasn’t really thinking when it came out—it was just her personality (and to her credit, she apologized to those who found the word offensive). What I wonder is why people found the word so offensive when the movie Leo won the Oscar for is rife with so much cursing that her fellow actress Amy Adams apparently had trouble finding new curse words to use. Perhaps the answer is that this was primetime television, not a movie theatre, or perhaps it’s that Leo was not performing a role but was appearing in a professional capacity. Which brings me back to my original question: Where’s the line between acting professionally and displaying personality?

Personally, I think the occasional curse word can be perfectly appropriate, especially when it’s tempered by asterisks and the like. Of course, this depends entirely on context, but in general, swearing can be an effective way to spice up a blog post, an article, or even a speech (to the right audience and on the right topic). However, it can be overdone, and it can also become gimmicky. I remember having to give a speech in school and being told to “grab people’s attention” with the opening, and more than one person got on stage and simply shouted “SEX!” before launching into whatever quotidian topic they were discussing. Including a curse word in your content just for the attention or controversy it may garner is never appropriate—it’s cheap and most definitely unprofessional.

In the end, it really boils down to the rules of good communication: Know your audience, choose words thoughtfully, and don’t overuse any word or device.