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"There's a dirty little secret about the politics of negativity and division: unfortunately, they work," said Trudeau. "Mr. Harper has proven that you can get elected with a majority that way. He's also proven that once you get elected that way, you can't govern worth a damn."

That is a quote in a story I did as an assignment about Justin Trudeau's speaking appearance in Lorette, MB last Wednesday. As I always do when writing a story, I consult the Canadian Press Style Book when I'm not sure on something.

This time, I wanted to make sure I could quote Trudeau saying "damn".

After reviewing the section on obscenities, there are times when using such language is allowed, including when "A prominent figure cursing in public..." I was good to proceed.

But after thinking on it for a day, I wondered: is "damn" even an obscenity?

This time, the Canadian Press Style Book had no answers. There was no list of words that were deemed unacceptable to print.

On an online forum, a few posters had a debate about what's ok to print and what's not ok. A poster named Greg Rasa, who appears to be affiliated with a daily newspaper in the northwest United States, had this to say regarding the quote from George W. Bush in 2000 when he called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a "major-league asshole":

"When it happened, back in the 2000 campaign, few papers printed it. We didn't. But after immersing myself in the Nexis search and seeing all of the dubious and lesser instances of that word being printed, I'm now certain that if it came out of the president's mouth today, we'd print it."

 The discussion brings up two good questions. Are the standards for printing certain words changing? And should there be different standards for online and print media?