"Bad" Words

In most spoken life, swear words are like salt and pepper - apply liberally to add interest to the offerings. At least in familiar settings.

Writing swear words, for me, adds weight to them. They were meant so emphatically that they could not be replaced with something more benign. Texting is a special case, somewhere between speaking and writing. But real writing, typing it out on the screen, putting pen to paper - that adds emotion.

Let me set a scene:

You are making breakfast. You are running late. The alarm didn't go off. Your phone didn't charge. The shirt you put on had a stain on it. You ran out of toothpaste. You cut yourself shaving. You have time for a bowl of cereal and that's it. You pour the cereal into the bowl. You turn to the refrigerator, open the door, and... "Where's the fucking milk?!?"
That is a perfectly natural sentence. However, when you go to add it to the grocery list, you aren't going to pen "fucking milk."

I recently purchased a typewriter. It's a decade older than I am. I love how it smells. I've taken to writing letters to a friend from my younger years, many miles away. She and I are very familiar when we text or talk and swear like sailors. I still use expletives when I correspond with her via snailmail, but each "damn" has more punch. Does the act of actually putting it on paper make it more damning? Do we still hold paper so dear that using it for something so crude seems wasteful and therefore Wrong? Is there a magic to the ink?

I don't have any answers. Feel free to expound on it in the comments.

This all was brought on by watching this video, which has an attached lesson plan.