It was the singer Charles Wright who once advised you to ~ express yourself ~.
The state of Colorado welcomes self-expression, but as it turns out, there are limits.
A Next viewer named Kevin, who recently attempted to get "America" on his personalized license plate, wrote to us with this:
"I am proud to live here and wanted to get a personalized plate to show everyone. I was disgusted to see that when I added my request for AMERICA to be put on a Colorado Ski USA plate, that AMERICA was flagged as 'offensive in the system!'
According to the state Department of Revenue, which issues plates, this was simply a glitch. Colorado does not consider "America" to be offensive, but the plate is unavailable. It is one of several high-demand plates that are reserved for charitable causes. That one is being auctioned by the Colorado Disability Funding Committee.
In our quest for an answer to Kevin's question, we realized there really is a state list of personalized plates deemed too offensive to see the light of day - and let us tell you, the vast majority of the words would be on a 13-year-old boy's dream license plate. Some of the others aren't particularly bad, but they sound like the words they don't let us say on TV. And alas, a small number of them seem fine, but maybe we need to catch up on our Urban Dictionary entries.
We included a few of the words for you here, but if you want to check out the whole list, click here. And here's your warning: it's NSFW, FYI.
There's also a list of three-letter combinations that are banned on all license plates - personalized or not. You'll notice that some entries that are banned on the first list - like FAQ, for example - don't show up on this list.
Is there something else you'd like Next to find an answer to? Email next@9news.com.
