We’ve had this question before – albeit not very often, since majority of people seem actually quite happy with our guidelines –

swearwords: yea or nay?

The answer is simple.

In general, we are not against swear words and swearing in stories at all. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find a book or a film today that is aimed at adults (and with that, we do NOT mean anything x-rated, actually…) and older teens that does not include some form of swearing. You have to look to religiously orientated books and stories or very specific child orientated works to find anything devoid of swearing.

Why? Well, in real life, people swear. And since books and films tend to represent a fragment of real life, even if they are set into a fictional world (where you may then find original swearwords with the more ingenious authors), the characters in them are likely to use swear words at some point in their book- or film-life. Swearing as such is not a forbidden thing – in fact, those internet sites, for instance, that do ban swearing, are somewhat on a censorship side, and we do not approve of censorship (and with a good reason… think back through history and consider all the times censorship of any kind was used – from issues with freedom of speech to forbidden books that were banned by the church… and now apply this to today, and, say, some people’s wish to erase books such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, or others, from existence not only do we have big issues with the idea of what is essentially banning not just freedom of speech and writing, but also religion and the right not to be religious, but also with there being less books… don’t forget, we are a publisher and really nuts about books  ). In short, while the internet is a no-man’s land in many ways, it can also easily become a breeding ground for extremist thought – which includes disregard for human rights, and you will find that freedom of speech, writing and so on do count under them. We have gone a long way to try and provide our authors and readers with a provider that cannot and will not ban anything that we publish or sell out of “moral grounds”, and we feel it is therefore our right to remind anyone who might say “yes, but…” that the internet does not exclude human rights from our daily lives. There is no but where it comes to human rights. Period. We are very serious about them, and we wish to respect them. And while there are sites that attempt to control what is written to the extent that does not deal with what is actually considered, by Western rules of the game, a crime (say, paedophilia), they should remember that they are in fact under the law of their provider, who falls under the law of their country of residence.

So we’re a-ok on your characters swearing.

But we do specify in our guidelines that we are not… or so one embarrassingly uncertain person suggested.

Well, if they had actually read the guidelines properly, they would very likely see the reasoning behind the seeming inconsistency. While we do not ban or have anything against swearwords in general, we do also publish romance and erotica, and we have a bit of an issue with certain words coming into those stories.

Why? Simply because we have a very firm opinion about sex and relationships, and the fact that we do not, under any circumstances, allow for a lot of inter-partner violence or less than consensual sex (if you want details, please go to the main site and check out the guidelines themselves).

Can a loving man refer to the woman, or her genitalia, as a cunt? We do not think so, and neither do we wish to see those terms applied in the stories we get sent. So in a way, this is really not about swearing… it’s more about consensual and loving relationships.

There is a lot of less than consensual in fiction, and frankly said, we do not want to see any of it. We are not unreasonable – rape and abuse happen, and as specified in the dreaded Guidelines, we understand that a character might have gone or has experienced either. But NEVER within what is supposed to be a loving relationship, and we get absolutely tetchy about gratuitous.

Another why?

Partly because we tend to think of our readers as well. Abuse, whether domestic or otherwise, as well as rape, are crimes. We do not like crime, nor do we want to publish people who express a wish to exonerate crime and criminals. To publish a romance novel that features a “loving” relationship that features rape or abuse by either partner to the other is to us pretty much assisting a crime.

Why?

Because there is a very strong tendency to ignore crime and because mass media, and books represent it, can either make or break the idea that we all have a right to live without abuse of any kind.

Also, you may have not considered this, but – victims of abuse also read novels. People whose work centres around solving crimes or helping those who have been victims of them also do. And believe us, they don’t want to read that kind of stuff, at all.

If you have an issue with us, or anyone else, regarding crime as crime, that’s too bad. We don’t really care, because we believe that everyone should stand up for human rights.

But we do hope that this explains a bit more about our view on swearwords. 