IT IS okay to break wind in the Echo. There is not even a problem with tooting or, though I may be getting myself in trouble here, letting one rip.

But there is a four-letter word for flatulence beginning with ‘f’ that still doesn’t belong right now in the Echo’s newspaper columns.

Or does it?

You know the word. I know the word. And in fact, every schoolchild in Britain knows the word. They just find it funny. Indeed, if an adult accidentally drops one into a conversation with a boy or girl around they won’t be offended. They’ll giggle.

But as the deputy editor of this publication I am sometimes asked to deliberate on whether this slang word or that expletive is suitable for our columns of print.

The tricky thing is that many of these words don’t offend me. Nor, I suspect, would they offend the majority of readers. That word for flatulence that children find such a gas, for example, seems harmless enough. Chaucer thought so for he based his The Miller’s Tale around the very act of bodily expulsion.

But, when printed in black and white in a family newspaper, I’m pretty sure the word still jars with many readers.

The trouble is that what is acceptable is forever changing. Radio Solent found itself in the soup only last week when a presenter used a clip of that famous Meg Ryan scene from When Harry Met Sally when talking about a new Viagra-type of drug for women.

It was a clip familiar to almost every adult... but he played it at the wrong time. When parents were on the school run.

And a lot of listeners were left far from satisfied after hearing Meg’s thrills.

Yet how many of the people who complained will have watched Gordon Ramsey’s The F Word on telly without a moan? Oh come on. Most viewers don’t tune in to get his recipes, do they? They just enjoy the edginess of his gross language.

I don’t, but I know you’ll find his favourite word printed hundreds of times in the most august newspapers and magazines these days as well as peppering half the TV programmes after 9pm. And teenagers certainly won’t be shocked by it.

But you won’t find that word in the Echo. Unless, perhaps, it was used in a courtroom and was part of a quotation that was vital to the trial. Or should we asterisk it out?

Normally, in other types of stories, we look for euphemisms. Which some might call bonkers.

Are we right to be a little priggish? Should we be bolder or avoid offending the five, 10 or 20 per cent?

Austin Powers might have had a certain exper- ience with a spy in a film a few years ago but we don’t use that word either. Yet.

Language is changing fast and who’s to judge when what becomes acceptable? Decades ago the film Moby Dick was shown in England but an American detective movie with a fairly similar title had to change its name to some- thing like The Private Eye.

Now, with text messages, Facebook, Twitter, emails and the like, language and social mores are changing like never before. Think how quickly words like Trampstamp, Unfriend, Meh, Mwah and uglier words like Minging have entered dictionaries in recent years.

Me? I think that ‘f’ word for flatulence is probably acceptable to almost everyone today... but I’m not sure.

So I think I’ll still wield the blue pen when a colleague tries to slip a crafty one without anybody noticing.

You can call me an old codger and you may be right. I won’t mind.

But I might get sniffy if you call me an old ****.