How much swearing?

[DalekBob]

Hello you horrible people! I'm hoping to eventually do a comic of my own if I can someday get off my arse and stop procrastinating. Just to give you a basic outline it's going to be a Sci-Fi story geared at a similar age range as Doctor Who and Blake's 7 (Basically family audiences with a slight tilt towards adults). However, while I'm aiming for a Web-PG rating with maybe an occasional Web-14 I'm curious as to how much swearing would be appropriate. While some limits are pretty obvious (e.g no gratuitous cursing, no f bombs in a PG) there's a few issues I's like some feedback on. For example, I'm a little unsure on whether or not s**t would be appropriate since the Web rating system seems to be modelled after US TV which generally seems to treat it as pretty taboo. However, I've seen a lot of PG rated movies, often directly aimed at families such as E.T, Back to The Future and Warriors of Virtue that used it a lot, so would it be appropriate for a Web-PG comic?

[McDuffies]

Since ratings are arbitrary and self-imposed in webcomics, you can put the rating that you think is suitable. If you think that it's not a problem for children to hear swear words like "shit", by all means, put PG or lower on it. I for one am pretty sure that kids can hear the same words everywhere around them, on the streets, in the house, from friends and so on.

[Dutch!]

They hear it and worse all the time and often from their mates, yes.

But personally, I'd pull back from using it unless you had to. Swearing usually just means you're not clever enough to show the emotion a better way.

Usually.

Sometimes a well placed swear word can absolutely make a scene too.

[Mastermind]

I have a problem with that too. My comic is rated PG and nobody swears although there's a superhero flying around with a button on his chest that says CUM.

If the word shit is said often, rate it web-14 and if it happens like once or twice in the whole comic and you usually replace it with crap, give it a PG, you can always change the rating anyway.

But don't underestimate the comedic value of a nasty word, fading into the distance if you ever decide to throw a character off a cliff.