Our language is one of the most abused parts of our every day lives. How it hasn’t asked for a restraining order against us is beyond me.

With noun-verb disagreements, misplaced modifiers and word usage such as “thru,” “donut” and “over” instead of “more than,” our butchering of the language is akin to using a blender without a lid. Sure, it gets the job done, but it leaves a mess in the process.

Language evolved because we did. Our larynx and mouth structure are unlike anything else in nature, allowing us to produce precise sounds. The first were probably onomatopoeias (Greek for “to make names”), which are words that sound like what they represent, like “boom,” “crackle,” “slap” and “sizzle.” (Although caveman onomatopoeias may have been words like “growl,” “woof” and “Gronk, my hair’s on fire.”)

Exactly how our language has developed is still argued. An example of this is the word for mother.

In English it’s “Mama.” In Chinese, oh, surprise, it’s “Mama.” In Swahili, what do you know? It’s “Mama.”

Germans say “Mutter,” Russians “Mat’,” Hindis “Mataji,” Swedes “Moder,” Icelanders “Móðir,” French “Mère,” Spanish “Madre.” I could go on. The point is, words for “mother” universally begin with “M.”

Crazy, right?

According to party poopers like Associate Professor Cheryl Messick at the University of Pittsburgh, “Ma,” is the first word a baby says because it’s the easiest sound for our larynx to produce. Except for the fact that the first word usually spoken is “Dad,” according to a Stanford University study.

Take that, party pooper.

However language evolved, the one ugly truth purveyors of grammar don’t like to admit is that language is made up. Every word, every rule, all invented by someone and we’re reinventing it all the time.

William Shakespeare alone is credited with inventing roughly 1,700 words, my favorites being “besmirch,” “obscene” and “puke.” (In the play “As You Like It,” he wrote a baby as, “Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.” Although you gave me headaches in high school English, William, we’re friends now.)

How many of you have conjured up words? Probably all of you.

I made up two words when I was small (at least two I remember). Dutchesspepper and Curlybird.

When I was five my family had a dog named Duchess. One day I held a plant up to her nose and she sneezed. In the cartoons, if Tom sprinkled Jerry with pepper, Jerry sneezed. So, in my little blond head, that weed was Duchess’ pepper, or, Duchesspepper. I still have no idea what the weed is really called.

Same with Curlybird. There’s a bird that’s call sounds like Curly from The Three Stooges. It might be a Sora, but I’m not sure, and frankly don’t care. It’s a Curlybird.

After being plagiarized in 2011, I came up with a word later printed in various newspapers and used on a TV broadcast about the incident. It was “flangry,” the feeling of being flattered and angry at the same time.

Although there’s the right way to spell things (through, doughnut) and the wrong way (thru, donut), this doesn’t preclude you from adding your own words to the lexicon.

And if you hear someone using your word, don’t be flangry about it. You’ve simply become part of the language.

I curse a lot, as do my characters – some of them. It’s not the classiest thing to do, but damn it, sometimes that’s just how the words come out.

My mother wasn’t a fan of swearing, although I occasionally heard her say, “shit” (the catch-all curse word of middle class America). When I was old enough to experiment with vulgarity, she told me that kind of language wasn’t for the clever. She expected more from me.

I eventually discovered Mom was right – sort of. Here are some examples:

In Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” the characters Antipholus and Dromio, talk about a large woman, whom they could have simply called the late 16^th/early 17^th century equivalent of “lard ass.” However, this is fucking Shakespeare.

Antipholus: “Then she bears some breadth?”

Dromio: “No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip. She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.”

Insulting, funny, and clean. You don’t have to use foul language to get your point across. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill didn’t when he verbally sparred with aristocrat Lady Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor.

Lady Astor: “You’re drunk.”

Winston Churchill: “My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.”

If Churchill was that pithy when drunk, I’d have hated to be on his bad side when he was sober.

But Mom wasn’t entirely right about cursing.

A study by psychologists Kristin and Timothy Jay published in Languages Science Journal concluded that, contrary to what Mom believed, people who curse are sometimes more intelligent than those who don’t.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to taboo language, it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves,” the psychologists wrote. “The overall finding of this set of studies … is a voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities rather than a cover for their deficiencies.”

Yeah. Whatever they said. Fucking science, you’re awesome.

So, after all that, is it okay to curse in your writing?

That depends on three things: 1) the audience, 2) the character, and 3) the situation.

The Audience

Are you writing for a newspaper? A nature conservation magazine? The Watchtower? If so, then you should probably stay away from @*$^, #$%@, and maybe even %&*^#^#!@. The reader isn’t expecting the curse word, and you’re violating their safe world by using one. As a writer, your first responsibility is to the reader – always. Don’t jerk them around.

However, if you’re writing a horror novel, and the protagonist doesn’t drop a “JC” or an “MF” or two while running from an ax-wielding maniac, you’re probably not depicting the situation as accurately as you should. In this case, the audience will expect the curse word, and might consider you disingenuous for leaving it out.

The Character

On “The Simpsons,” the Reverend Lovejoy doesn’t curse because he’s a man of God. Homer Simpson does because he’s a narcissistic bastard. On “Star Trek,” Mr. Spock doesn’t curse because he’s the voice of stone-faced reason. Dr. McCoy does because, damn it, “I’m not a magician, Spock, just an old country doctor.” Samuel L. Jackson’s Neville Flynn in the movie “Snakes on a Plane” curses because he’s Samuel L. Jackson.

Flynn: “Enough is enough. I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.”

It works for him. Have you ever heard Samuel L. Jackson narrate the parody children’s book, “Go the Fuck to Sleep”? It’s beautiful.

In Stephen King’s novel, “Misery,” the psychotic antagonist Annie Wilkes hates profanity so much she says things like “cockadoodie” and “dirty bird.” But those are her curse words, her motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane, and they work. To her, they’re just as bad, just as dirty, just as meaningful.

The Situation

Remember when I mentioned the ax-wielding maniac? Even the most polite person will forget their manners in a crisis. Did you ever hear a teacher lose their cool in high school? Hilarious, right? They were furious about something (in my case, me). That’s their motivation. It’s okay when your characters curse, but there has to be a reason for it – every single time.

Finding snakes on a plane is a pretty damn good reason.

In the 1996 action movie “Eraser,” Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the muscle-bound good guy who defies all odds to rescue the girl and make the world safe for humanity. You know the one, right. While watching it (again) recently, I realized two things:

• My love affair with Netflix may be problematic.
• The science was wrong.

Number One I can deal with. Number Two I can’t. I’ll get to that in a minute.

When astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson saw director James Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997), he realized the night’s sky was full of random pinpoints of light, not the actual star field the people aboard the sinking Titanic would have seen on April 15, 1912. Tyson called him on it, and when Cameron re-released “Titanic” in 3D, the star field had been corrected.

Although going back to correct stars for the North Atlantic wasn’t necessary (I mean, the movie still grossed $1.84 billion worldwide, right?), good for James Cameron.

The bad science in “Eraser,” however, is egregious.

When Schwarzenegger’s U.S. Marshal John “The Eraser” Kruger is drugged aboard a private jet by good guy-turned-bad guy U.S. Marshal Robert DeGuerin (played by the always spot-on James Caan), he shrugs off the effects of the drugs (I’m not even angry about that), blows the door, and makes his brilliant escape. The brilliance is how a 6’2”, 235-pound man can drop a parachute from a plane, jump after it, and catch up to the chute just in time to slip it on, pull the cord, and land without killing himself.

Our Friend Physics 1: Items of different weights fall at the same rate. Try it. Grab an orange, and a grape. Now drop them. It doesn’t matter how much more the orange weighs, the fruit will land at exactly the same time.

The same goes for a man and a parachute. Although wind resistance can slightly vary the rate at which objects fall, it’s not going to slow the chute, or speed up Schwarzenegger’s character enough to catch it.

Our Friend Physics 2: A private jet has an average cruising speed of 604 mph. Arnold jumped from the jet exactly eight seconds (I timed it) after he dropped the parachute. At 604 mph, eight seconds would put a mile and a half between Arnold and that big old bag of life-saving nylon.

Splat.

It’s easy. Get things right. Your reader may be an astrophysicist, or someone like me, an armchair science enthusiast who got most of his training watching old episodes of “Star Trek.”

It’s not hard. That whacky Internet can help, so can your local library, or better yet, your local university. Universities are filled with experts in almost every field who love to answer questions. In fact, we’re paid to do it.

And this doesn’t just go for science. Get everything right. I grew up on a farm. If I wrote what I was confident about, my stories would involve tractors, arc welding, and animal husbandry. It would get boring after a while.

If you’re going to write about police procedure, and you’ve never been a policeman, ask your local department if you can ride along, or hang out at the station. The same if you’re writing about a doctor, mechanic, airplane pilot, or sideshow freak. Just get it right. There will always be someone in your audience who knows when you’ve made a factual error, and chances are they’ll simply stop reading.

To quote another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “Don’t do that.”

Welcome to my site. Author’s websites are often an eclectic collection of essays/stories/blog posts, pictures of the author (usually in dark tones looking laughingly serious), and links where they shake you down for money. This website is just like that (especially where I shake you down for money), except the part about the pictures. See? I’m wearing flannel, I’m not too serious, and I’m enjoying an excellently poured beer. Please join me. Although I may indulge myself in the occasional bouts of silliness (check out my Twitter feed to the right), I’m serious about writing, and will offer my thoughts on The Process from time to time.

I began writing in elementary school, but I wasn’t any good because, well, I was in elementary school. I wrote in high school, and although the words I produced were still rubbish, I thought my stories were awesome (totally awesome). I wrote in college where one Creative Writing professor did the greatest favor anyone has ever done for me – he told the truth. I stunk. The guy was right, but I didn’t realize that for years. I was too angry. That anger turned into determination, which turned into me working hard to make my writing better. Hmm. Funny how that works. You improve with practice. Too bad the guy’s dead; I’d like to thank him.

I’ve written professionally for a number of years (it’s cool to see checks with your name on them), but I’m still learning about The Process. We all get better with time.

Welcome.