Everybody knows the Review-Journal is a family newspaper. Ward Cleaver’s family, in fact. (After all, the newspaper in 1993 refused to publish For Better or For Worse when that comic strip featured a 17-year-old character coming to terms with the fact that he was gay.)

But we were still surprised to see R-J editors redact from a headline the word "damn," over a year-in-review package of Jim Day’s editorial cartoons. The story quoted legendary Boss Tweed lamenting how even illiterate constituents could understand those "damned pictures." But the headline replaced "damned" with this punctuation: "#%@*"

That’s curious: If "damned" can appear in a story (and even worse has appeared in direct quotes in the R-J over the years) why not a headline? Especially over a story in which plenty of "damned pictures" are published, sure to draw the attention of young and old alike.

And when did "damned" become a really bad word, anyway? It’s not like Boss Tweed was dropping the dreaded F-bomb. Or the M-F bomb. Or the A-bomb. Or the S-bomb. Or the MFCSSW-bomb. Seriously, people.

Anyway, our thought was that if it was cool in the copy, it’s acceptable for the headline, yet another difference between the R-J and our little blog.