Does profanity rev up your message, or put off your audience?

Does profanity help or hurt your audience messaging?

As communicators trying to reach diverse and disparate demographics, it’s usually unwise to offer anything that might be taken offensively. However, strong language can deliver benefits.

Beto O’Rourke, who is running for president, got plenty of coverage for his impassioned outburst over a question about the president’s response to the mass shooting in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso, Texas, which he represented in Congress.

The Cut wrote:

Someone asked him whether Donald Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric had anything to do with the El Paso tragedy, before which the suspect, now in custody, had published a white-supremacist screed on the website 8chan.