There's no way for me to know if this is the reason, but in the Orthodox Jewish faith people don't write out "God" because it's the name of the most holy being, so they substitute "G_d" to keep from writing out His title or His Name. Even people of Jewish heritage who become Christians often retain this convention.
Thanks for that, Terry and, now that you mention it, I do seem to recall hearing something of the same at the time. I'd forgotten that.
If reading obscenities spoken by a character doesn't bother people, they probably won't see the difference that removal of the vowels makes, but it's there. It's approximately the same difference as hearing "shoot" vs hearing the actual word that "shoot" stands for.
That's probably very true. It still doesn't seem quite the same thing as 'the f word' for me - it seems more of several lengths further along from that, more explicit than 'the f word', taking it to several next degrees, but I think you're right that it's probably all down to how we view the word in the first place as to whether it works as a tactic for us or not.
I'm obviously very firmly in this group, which is probably no surprise as in real life I'm afraid I'm extremely casual with language which would make a sailor's parrot blush.
So you're right in that I do tend to read the whole word, my brain not being fooled by asterisk substitution at all.
LabRat
