On the rare occasion it can be an effective mechanism for hammering a point home, but you’d have to pick those times judiciously.

That being said, you can get into a bit of cross-cultural mishaps. For instance, the words “bloody” and “hell” are not really considered swear words here in Australia, but I believe are in the US.

With the recent displays of poor judgement at some recent Flash and Ruby conferences in the use of sexually explicit content or behaviour in presentations, this is probably a timely topic.

Funny anecdote: We had this neighbouring cat that would come over and hang around my office window and terrorise our cats. I was on the phone with a client when this cat made an appearance, and without thinking I stood up, banged on the window and yelled, “Piss off!”

Fortunately it was a client who knew me pretty well and so was caching himself laughing instead of being offended, and laughed even harder when I told him what was going on.

I won’t tell you about the windstorm I created when I used the word “mastication” in church…