This column contains strong language. More that that, this column is about strong language - which explains why it contains some.

In writing it I faced a dilemma: either spell out the strong words in full and risk offending readers, or put in asterisks and risk offending myself.

I have chosen the former, as to write f*** or s*** feels like draping a doily over a dog turd. The turd is still there: you can see it peeping through the holes and it smells just as bad, but its offensiveness is made worse by the futility of the effort to cover it up.

With this warning issued, I can now tell a story that happened to me a few days ago. It was five past six in the evening, and I was behind deadline for filing a column. Hastily I pressed send, though forgot to press save first. The column vanished.

"FUCK!" I said. This wasn't an articulate response, but then the occasion didn't call for one. I had spent the whole day trying to use words elegantly and now would have to start all over again.

"Fucking, fucking, fucking, shit, shit, shit," I said. There was something about the uncompromising nature of the words that made me start to feel a little better.

Last week, a professor at the University of East Anglia made the headlines by declaring that such outbursts at work can be a good thing. Yehuda Baruch argued that while swearing is neither big nor clever, it should be tolerated in stressful moments. I would go further than this: swearing is not just tolerable as a stress reliever, it is one of the best ones going. It is free, it is easy to use, it doesn't cause sclerosis of the liver, and it doesn't involve wearing Lycra or getting sweaty.

The professor made another observation: swearing can help workers bond. Trotsky came up with a similar idea in the 1920s. He thought that swearing was a product of class oppression, and that as capitalism withered away, so would swearing.

Eighty years on, capitalism hasn't withered away and swearing hasn't either. Indeed, swearing has thrived at work: a recent survey showed that 76 per cent of UK office workers sometimes swore, while a similar study in the more priggish US showed that 44 per cent were cussers.

Swearing at work can not only bring people together, it can be used as a way of signalling informality. Last week, a senior manager I had previously thought was a stuffed shirt said something to me about a "bloody report", and I liked him a tiny bit more for it.

Swearing can also unite workers against customers in a harmlessly satisfying way. In restaurants, staff mince round tables asking if everything is alright, then back in the kitchen open their mouths and a volley of obscenities come out.

In most offices, staff have to be excessively polite on the phone, so it can sometimes be nice, after a particularly trying conversation, to be able to put the receiver down and mutter "wanker".

Employers quake at the legal consequences of swearing. The coach of the Knicks team in the US was sued by a former marketing executive who claimed he called her a "bitch" and a "fucking ho". In the UK, a company director who told his secretary she was an "intolerable bitch on Monday mornings" suffered the legal consequences.

However, such cases don't mean that all swearing needs to be eradicated, just that we need to learn how to swear better. There are a few simple principles that we should follow. Don't swear too much, as the impact is lost on repeated applications. Don't swear at anyone, particularly not a boss or a customer. Swearing is safest in the company of people at a similar level. Senior people may swear in private but should be careful about doing it in public. When the famously foul-mouthed retailer Sir Philip Green unleashed a stream of fucks and fuckings in a press interview he didn't look informal, he just looked crude and stupid.

There is also a hierarchy of offensiveness that needs to be observed. Shit, bollocks, bugger and bloody are all increasingly acceptable. Fuck, while off-limits 20 years ago at work, is now accepted in many offices. Cunt, on the other hand, is acceptable in almost none. Blasphemous words - damns and hells and Jesus Christs - are oddly becoming less acceptable than they used to be, especially in the US.

Indeed, in the US there is a regrettable backlash against any swearing at all. One anti-swearing consultant, writing in the US press this month, suggested that workers should set up a system of self-regulation. He recommended that employees should give a swift thumbs-down to any colleague caught "stepping over the profanity line".

This is a terrible idea. If someone had started giving me prissy hand signals as I started to swear last week my rage attack would have got a lot uglier.

Instead, I have a better suggestion: to convert old smoking rooms into swearing rooms. People feeling the need for some bonding or stress relief could dash to the rooms for a quick swear. There could be graffiti on all the walls saying "FUCK OFF" and worse. Inside you would scream: "Shitface! Motherfucker! Wanker!" Yet even thinking about the room I wonder if it might not achieve another purpose. After a minute or two inside, employees might emerge cured of swearing altogether and wanting to wash out their mouths with soapy water.

lucy.kellaway@ft.com

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