I swear when I get frustrated or to make an emphatic point.  But I really cannot stand people who use swears almost every 5 seconds, such as, "I went to the fuckin' store the other fuckin' day to buy some shit, and I thought, 'Goddammit, these fuckin' prices are goddamn expensive!!'"  I'm no prude, but I find that type of talk completely tiresome to listen to.

And yes, my respect for that type of person will plummet.  There's no need for it.

My wife and I can get frustrated in equal measure, and we've been known to grumble and swear, probably every day!  But the "c-word" is off limits in our household, as well as any racial or anti-gay epithets.

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If someone swears with complete disregard to the appropriateness of the company they're in, the context, the situation, then yes, it would colour my thoughts towards them for the obvious reason that it indicates they are either oblivious to how they should conduct themselves or aware of this but unable to control themselves.

If I ring my bank and the customer services person happily starts swearing down the line, that's not a good look. If I'm in a business meeting with a potential customer and an associate of mine starts swearing, that's not a good look. If I say good morning to a stranger and they respond "I'm fucking great, how are you?" that's just weird, maybe disconcerting.

So at the risk of stating the obvious, it comes down to the social situation and how well you know the person.

If you're down the pub, having a drink and someone you know well is effing and blinding, I wouldn't give it a second thought.

I do think over-use simply reduces the impact. Just as many people these days use 'super' as a go-to modifier to the extent that it almost means nothing, so throwing in the f word all the time tends towards superfluousness.

I've mentioned this before, but I once watched a TV version of Midnight Run with the swear words dubbed over. Dennis Farina's line "I'm gonna stab you through the heart with a fucking pencil!" was changed to "I'm gonna stab you through the heart with a broken pencil!", which I thought was a bit more imaginative. Yes, the original line makes the character seem more rough around the edges. But the latter, is more descriptive and the imagery is richer.

As for the C word, it does seem to be becoming more and more common. Did crop up as far back as being part of the joke about ringing for 'Mike Hunt' in 1981's Porky's, and Pacino goes off on a tirade against Kevin Spacey in 1992's Glengarry Glenross in which he uses the word. I think that was the first time I heard it in an American movie (though I have since come across films before then that used it). The word was quite liberally used by certain kids at my school in England when I was about 10 or 11.

I feel the British have a wider scope of choice when it comes to swear words. There is the aforementioned bollocks, but also wanker is a useful fall back. Arse is another. Or bellend. The British also have a nice line in inventive use of offensive words. For example, cuntchops. We also have sort of swear words, that aren't quite swear words, but not the kind of things to be used in polite company, such as slag, prick, or bastard. Bleeding, bloody and crap were all considered sort of swear words when I was a child., as in "Just give me the bleeding money, you slag, and bloody hurry it up!"

Take, for example, this:

I would wager an American reading that would have a very different understanding than someone who was British.