Global Investing Editor

Blogs, Profanity and Editorial Integrity

about profanity. IMO as an older female financial journalist and a grandmother of (at last count) 5 children under the age of 8, three of whom know how to read, bad words are useless and not persuasive. they do nothing to improve financial and stock analysis.

Irrelevent profanity is simply something you don't want your grandchildren to learn from you or from your fellow-contributors. Reading the Madoff piece which Mr. Weinstein left alone, I truly do not think it gained any impact or authority by the repeated and silly use of one piece of very bad language. The author had something to say and he or she should have been asked to clean the piece up for publication. That has little to do with free speech and plenty to do with publishing standards which should apply even on the Internet