There is a line somewhere between being "colourful" (and using some "bad words" when they are really needed) which may be "unpolite" or "inappropriate" according to the British and being NOT "politically correct" according to the Americans.

The first can easily be "fixed" for the more sensitive audience by using synonyms or some asterisk/hyphen substitution, or more generally toning it down a bit, and is - if I am allowed to use the two words together - substantially formal only.

The second is instead IMHO a bigger issue, because it implies a form of (self or coming from the society) imposed censorship on the "concepts".

The Americans that have in theory the most permissive (thanks to first amendment) Laws on the right of expressing one's opinion have seemingly in practice a lot more "forbidden" topics (in the sense of topics on which your opinion "must" conform to the society accepted take on the matter).

At least this is my impression.

No not at all. I'm sorry but British TV and society in general are infinitely more open to swear words than the same in America.

in the 70's perhaps. Not so much anymore and definitely much less so in the workplace. The:

> thou shalt not swear

on the internet programming community is really coloured by corporate and most corporate is American. The big argument I get is about corporate firewalls preventing access to any StackOverflow page with a cuss in it.