The cock stop’s here

No, dear grammar geeks, that is not a misplaced apostrophe up there in the title. In fact it would be most ironic if ’twas so, as this post is all about punctuation.

And swearing.

Now before we begin, I would like to make it clear that I am far from chaste of mouth, I swear quite a bit, especially, for some reason, at work, where pretty much every mistake, frustration or windows crash (of which there are many), is greeted by anything from a plain old “shit” to a slightly more creative “flying bollocks from hell” and all manner of intermediate and random swearmongery.

But I can’t help but notice that there are many people, especially in the English language, and especially on public transport, who use so much swearing in their everyday conversation that it makes Tarantino movies look like a Secret Seven omnibus. It really has become a form of punctuation in its own right.

You may – but you probably won’t – be familiar with the ill-fated irony mark (؟), the interrobang (‽) and other failed punctuation propositions that neve really caught on. So I would like to propose a new punctuation mark to enable modular and adaptable writing. I give you (drumroll please): The cockstop .|.

Just as a comma or a full stop inserts a pause or break into a sentence, the cockstop denotes a place to insert a swearword. The degree of the swearword is entirely up to the reader, who can even choose to leave it blank. A bit like a sweary version of Madlibs.

How about an example?