The other point I was trying to make is that, unlike many blogs, this one attracts many non-English writers. There is always a possibility that they will use a word in its French sense, without fully understanding all its English nuances. If they make an unintentional mistake and are then criticised for their use of that word, the criticism seems to me unfair. That’s why I feel commentators have to be doubly careful in how they respond (because from the pseudonym they do not necessarily know the nationality of the author) - however, that should in no way prevent them from responding, just do it with delicatesse. That is why I wrote that it’s far better to criticise le fond than la forme.

Otherwise, yes, Mr Harris, I am a sort of expatriate pissing in. Is the pissing bad or it is the inward character of it ?

And that is the second point: the peculiarity of a blog is that you communicate with (leave comments for) people you do not know. And since we are all strangers, as at a masked ball, politeness is doubly imperative. For example, John Harris, in the first comment above, appears to assume that ange.scalpel is either “an expatriate pissing in or a Brit pissing out.” In his second comment John reminds us that “many foreigners have difficulty judging the force of swearwords in a language not their own.” I am not sure whether in that sentence John is addressing all of us as “many foreigners” or ange.scalpel in particular, but if the latter, he is teaching a French person how to understand his own language. ange.scalpel is a born and bred Frenchman, author of several books, working in one of the most prestigious jobs in French higher education. Neither John Harris nor anyone else was to know this – that is the point (although the high level of ange.scalpel’s culture might be guessed from the references he makes). At last count a quarter of those reading this blog were French, a third from the UK. Some commentators are interested amateurs, some extremely well-qualified (recently a former editor of the Economist, before that the founding editor of the Independent): my request to anyone wishing to comment on this blog is to do so freely, but “politely, modestly” – you may just be teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

Because some people will be writing in their second language, it is important, in my view, to criticise le fond and not la forme of what they write.
On the particular point raised by John Harris and Marie-France about the devaluation of the French swearwords: yes, this is something I think most people living in France would quickly pick up. There are nevertheless codes for the use of gros mots. They are, fairly obviously, banned from the primary school I teach in (in other words children are taught, sometimes by punishment, that they are wrong, even though their parents use them – the start of double standards). Equally they would never, by common consent, be used at my parents-in-law’s table. Franz-Olivier Giesbert caused quite a stir in 2006 when he revealed in his book “La Tragédie du president” that Dominique de Villepin swears a lot in private, particularly when referring to his colleagues. And while on the subject of words, I imagine ange.scalpel used the word “vulgarity” in its original English and common French sense – not necessarily as a judgement on something offensive. Dominique de Villepin, for example, cannot be called vulgaire, even though he uses gros mots.