The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however, well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.
Emily Bronte, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë (1851). “Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey: In Two Volumes”, p.16