Sansung,
Oh come, come. People who use double negatives are "dumb" and/or "stupid"? That's exceedingly harsh. I would have thought, surely, that they were merely poorly educated? Hardly an indication of their mental capacity. After all, I'm sure that the faulty grammar in the sentence:"There's far more intelligent substitutes for the F word." doesn't signal any lack of intelligence on your part.

I would also have think that someone who uses the word habitually gives an indication of their socio-economic background rather than any kind of intelligence deficiency. After all, politicians who habitually use phrases such as "working families" are neither dumb nor ignorant, business people who habitually use words such as basically, and teenagers who habitually use the word random immediately give away their origins by the same habit of using a word or phrase in a repetative way.

Pelican. No, you were quite right to point out my lack of clarity...as has been pointed out often, it's only too easy to be completely misunderstood on these threads. And yeah, the study of the English language, which a lot of people think is dry and boring, can be totally absorbing and fascinating, can't it?

Actually Romany, you should maybe get the facts right. That poster did NOT say people in general who use double negatives are dumb. The poster specifically said dumb criminals, you know......those people who commit crimes and get caught, often say "I didn't do nothin'" when they get caught. And the poster is correct in saying that the caught criminal by saying "I didn't do nothin'" is really saying "I did it", because of the double negative. The poster is saying the criminal is too dumb to realise what he's actually saying. These criminals are NOT smart, they are dumb; after all, they got caught. The poster's comments referred ONLY to "criminals" and ONLY to criminals who were "dumb". And he is absolutely correct.

Another point Romany, you criticise the poster for bad grammar in his sentence "There's far more intelligent substitutes for the F word". Would you please tell us precisely where the bad grammar exists? It looks perfectly ok to me. And so what, anyway! It's rather silly criticising someone's post because of what you think is bad grammar, and even sillier when you're wrong.