How do court reporters handle swears? (NSFW)

They type the word out as said, “fuck,” “motherfucker” etc.

In preparing the final transcripts – back in the days of Richard Nixon and the Watergate tapes, they used <Expletive Deleted> in place of the word. Some pages of the transcript has dozens of expletives deleted. Oh the good old days of honest crooks.

They don’t substitute for swear words.

A court reporting machine (stenotype) records words phonetically anyway.