Grawlix  

Grawlix is a term coined by American comic artist Mort Walker to describe the typographical symbols used to represent profanity or swearing in comic strips and cartoons. These symbols, such as @#$%&! are often used instead of actual curse words to convey the emotion or tone of the character’s speech while keeping the content appropriate for all audiences.

The term “grawlix” is a playful combination of the words “growl” and “graphics,” suggesting the grumbling or angry tone that the symbols represent. Grawlixes indicate that a character is using strong or offensive language without actually spelling out the words.

Examples: Grawlix

• Oh, @#$%! I left my wallet at home!
• You did what with my new shirt? #$%&@!
• I can’t believe this %$#@& computer crashed again!
• Holy $#!%, did you see that amazing catch?
• I’ve had it with these &^%$#@! telemarketing calls!
• What the $%#@ is wrong with this printer?

How is Grawlix used?

Grawlix is a series of typographical symbols, typically including ampersands (&), at signs (@), exclamation points (!), question marks (?), percentage symbols (%), hash or pound symbols (#), and dollar signs ($), used in random order. These symbols are employed solely in written communication to represent censored profanity or strong language, as they cannot be verbalized in spoken dialogue.

In verbal communication, the term “bleep” is often used to represent the censoring of expletives or sensitive content, mimicking the electronic sound used to mask such language in audio recordings. While grawlix should be avoided in formal writing, such as academic papers, it is occasionally used in casual contexts like text messages, often in the form of an emoji showing an angry face with the mouth obscured by typographical symbols, to express frustration or strong emotions.

Examples: Grawlix in text messages

Person A: I can’t believe you told everyone about my secret! I trusted you!

Person B: I’m so sorry! It just slipped out. I didn’t mean to, I swear!

Person A: Oh, well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it? I’m so &$#%*@! furious with you right now!

Person B: I know, I messed up badly. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. Please forgive me! ????

Person A: It will take some time for me to trust you again. I need some space to process this. Don’t contact me for a while, okay? ????

In this conversation, Person A uses grawlix (“&$#%*@!”) to express their intense anger and frustration towards Person B for revealing a secret. The grawlix conveys strong emotions without explicitly spelling out the curse words, while the emoji (????) further emphasizes Person A’s displeasure with the situation. This example demonstrates how grawlix and emojis can be used together in informal text communication to express strong feelings and self-censor profanity.

Grawlix is frequently employed on social media as a form of self-censorship or to circumvent platform guidelines and policies prohibiting particular offensive or inappropriate language.

In these cases, instead of replacing entire words with symbols, users often substitute specific letters within a word, particularly in offensive or prohibited terms. Imagine a Twitter user discussing a controversial political topic and wanting to express their frustration without explicitly using profanity. They might tweet something like:

I can’t believe these politicians are still trying to pass that b*llsh!t bill. It’s a complete waste of taxpayer money and a d@mn disgrace to our democracy! ???? #PoliticalCircus #SMH

In this tweet, the user has replaced some letters in the words “bullshit” and “damn” with asterisks and symbols, creating “b*llsh!t” and “d@mn”. This allows them to convey their intense emotions and opinions while still adhering to Twitter’s guidelines, which prohibit using certain explicit language.