No Bad Daddy Words

You might find this hard to believe, but we get writers around here who constantly want to use the F-word in their stories—and presumably in their lives. (My daughters call this the "F-swear," which they've heard daddy say once or twice, I'm sorry to say. To which I have responded, "Do as I say... not, uh..... as I do—say... er. Never mind. Just don't use that word. It's a bad daddy word." ) Why do so many writers wish to use that word? Because they see so many other writers getting to use that word in other publications.

When we first launched The Rake three years ago, we considered whether or not we were going to print that word. It slipped into a few early issues, but only in direct quotes, and more or less under our breath. (If you can find the issue and the story, I will personally buy you dinner and drinks, no kidding. But you may have to sign a confidentiality agreement, heh heh.)

We never would have decided that it was OK to print the word in display type (a headline, or a pull quote, or any other loud context), and we always intended to work very hard to find alternatives to the word, even in direct quotes. This can be an interesting challenge, and it leads to some artful editing—which is one of the little word-geek things that makes this job fun.

For example, in this month's short story, by Sara Woster. The story is about a young girl whose father spends a lot of time teaching her outdoor survival skills. At one point in the story, the girl is speaking to another girl—a teenager—at the side of a hotel swimming pool somewhere in South Dakota. Here is the exchange:

"How long can you tread water?" Laurie asked, inching toward her father, who was holding open the door to the hotel.

"Who cares? It's the goddam prairie. There is no water," the girl said.

Now Sara's original draft had the girl saying "It's the fucking prairie." That is a much stronger word, much more acidic, and really works a lot better than "goddam." It rings truer, and hits the ear better. But a policy is a policy. We made the story a teeny-tiny bit worse—something we never otherwise do, especially in a piece of fiction—because we simply do not print that word. It wasn't that big a trade-off, in the grand scheme of things, and Sara was gracious about it.

When we were considering whether or not to take a hard line on this policy, I called up Adam Moss, who was at the time the editor of the New York Times magazine, and I asked him if the word "fuck" had ever appeared in the New York Times. Everyone at the Times knows the answer to that question. The word "fuck" appeared once, in a direct quote from Richard Nixon.

So that is now OUR official policy, too, and we think it's a good one: Only Richard Nixon gets to say "fuck" in print, and he's dead (though I suppose he is still imminently quotable).

Also, we get to say it on the web. Just this once, maybe.—The Editor in Cheese