Sue S., it sounds like you've met some of the students at my school, who can use a certain word as a noun, verb, pronoun, adverb, adjective, conjunction, and expletive--frequently all in the same sentence.
My youngest sister had to learn the hard way not to use the 'f' word in front of her son--one afternoon I was talking to her on the phone, and she let her little boy talk to me. What did he say when she gave him the phone? "F--- you, Auntie." He was about 18 months old.
I don't tend to be offended by profanity--I hear it all the time. I don't use it at work, though, and not often elsewhere (though I'll admit that when I discovered that the people taking out a dead pine tree from the yard had dropped a good-sized chunk of wood on a small lemon tree and snapped it off at the base, I had some choice words).
I've used a couple of swear words in my story Panem, though they're mild ones. The other swearing is cut off mid-sentence or described as being bleeped out. I do think that there are times when swear words fit the situation and/or the character.
