Dear Future Gamer,

In reply to the recent letter concerning swearing in FG, clearly Rob Marsden has nothing better to do with his time than find things to be offended at. I thought the use of the word fuck was clearly in context in the offending article. I mean, does he really think his innocent 12-year-olds can't decipher f**k or b*****ks etc.? Have you listened to kids these days? They swear like troopers as a rule, and I bet not one of them saw this word for the first time in Future Gamer.

Life is too short to listen to people of this ilk. If the guy interviewed swears then why not print it? The subject of his remarks wasn't offensive, surely this is what matters. Or would Mr Marsden rather read an eloquently worded description of child torture - no nasty swear words makes this okay, does it?

I can see why people get put out by gratuitous swearing and rude-wordery, such as that used by PlayStation Plus and the laddish mags. After all, there is something quaintly child-like about striving so clumsily to be offensive. I find them rather amusing, myself, but these publications thrive on people like Rob Marsden getting outraged and giving them a sort of underground appeal with the very innocents he wants to protect.

I suggest he stops rising to the bait. Not that this will help his cause, but at least it will give us all a rest.

Michael Foster.

FG: I agree with you Michael. People swear. Well, the people I associate with anyway. And I've even, gasp, heard girls swear. We don't want gratuitous rude-wordery (like the phrase) because it's puerile and often I'll cut words simply because the point the author's trying to make doesn't require it. I also think interviews should be fair and accurate representations of what the person actually said. Ideally they should be verbatim, and if that involves the odd swear word, so be it. My final thoughts on the subject are that if people are seriously offended by our occasional use of expletives, whether they're eight or 80, then they should remove themselves from our subscriber's list.