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Par Miss Lantin le 14 Novembre 2015 à 06:02
PARIS — The Paris area reeled Friday night from a shooting rampage, explosions and mass hostage-taking that President François Hollandecalled an unprecedented terrorist attack on France. His government announced sharply increased border controls and heightened police powers as it mobilized the military in a national emergency.
French television and news services quoted the police as saying that around 100 people had been killed at a concert site where hostages had been held during a two-hour standoff with the police, and that perhaps dozens of others had been killed in apparently coordinated attacks outside the country’s main sports stadium and four other popular locations in the city. But estimates on the total number of dead varied.
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Par Miss Lantin le 24 Août 2015 à 13:08
“Hi.”
No, forget that – too boring.
“Hey!”
Hmmm – too giddy.
“Wasssup!”
Yikes – too Budweiser.
It’s one of life’s little conundrums many of us are forced to confront every day: what salutation should we use to start an email?
When electronic mail first pinged on the scene – around the mid-90s – it felt rather contrived to use the informal US salutation “Hi”. This was despite TV imports like Friends continuing their relentless Americanisation of our language.
“Dear” felt more reassuring. Remember, this was when it was still “e-mail”. It was a new service that had not yet built up its own lore or idiosyncrasies. As such, it was treated as the straight-up, newer, shinier version of real-life mail. “Dear” was how we began handwritten and printed pieces of communication, so “Dear” is how we decided to start these.
That didn’t last. “Dear” is now only dusted down and pressed into service by true traditionalists. It’s too stiff and formal, its demise hastened by the rash of conversational language we are exposed to at every turn. These days, even organisations renowned for their stuffiness, like banks or insurance companies, write the way we speak. No one says “Dear” in real life, so no one says it in emails.
As email became sufficiently ingrained in our lives to shed its cumbersome hyphen, we began to realise it was a much more fluid means of communication than its printed predecessor. “Hi” no longer seemed contrived. Instead it felt bright and concise and right. We had a new industry standard.
At this stage I should probably divulge my bias: “Hi” remains my go-to salutation for almost all professional emails. However, its position as our country’s first-choice first-word has recently come under threat. Some feel it’s too ubiquitous and not emotive enough. No longer fresh, it now suggests autopilot.
Jeffrey ‘Hey now!’ Tambor as Hank (left) with Rip Torn and Garry Shandling in The Larry Sanders Show. Photograph: Moviestore Collection / Rex Feat/Rex Features
“Hey” is the hip new kid on the block. Another US import, it promises greater intimacy and urgency – a powerful combination that suggests your recipient really needs to read what you’ve got to say.
Others disagree. To “Hi”’ traditionalists – or, heaven forbid, “Dearists” – “Hey” is too shouty, unsophisticated and familiar for the workplace. It feels as if it should be followed by “you guys” and used by the sort of people who insist you have a nice day.
For those who can’t stomach “Hey”, I present an alternative: “Hello”. The UK version of “Hi”, it’s warm, reassuring and just the right balance of familiar and professional. No wonder it’s already become a chatty copy cliche in the world of advertising and branding.
Sifting through my inbox, it’s very rare to find someone eschewing the “Hi-Hey-Hello” triumvirate. However, such mavericks do exist. One member of my book club never uses a salutation. He just plops my name down and plonks a comma after it. (BTW, is it still rude or ungrammatical to drop that comma?)
I don’t mind this direct approach. But, then again, I know him to be a plain-speaking chap. To others it might be a touch too curt. It also reminds me of the communist’s favourite salutation – “Comrade!” – which was never without its insistent exclamation mark.
There aren’t many brave enough to adopt this brusque approach. In fact, most millennials are so fearful of sounding insensitive that they will follow their chosen salutation with a cursory “How are you?” Can we all cut this out? A dreadful idea in speech, it becomes truly irritating on screen. Harold Pinter wrote a parody of the automatic use of this phrase, exposing the lack of sincerity in those who employ it. Now I don’t want to come across all Larry David, but no one genuinely wants to know how you are. If you told them truthfully, they wouldn’t have a clue how to react.
This trend only started a couple of years ago and seems to be indicative of our age of sentiment – where professing emotion is more important than feeling, let alone acting, on it. Email is supposed to be an efficient method of communication. Down with email niceties, comrades! Let’s all get to the point, make it and move on with our lives.
So, what other alternatives are there? Well, there’s “Hello there” or even “Hey there”. These will occasionally kick off a business email but surely only if the sender has been working with the recipient for a wee while. To my mind, they’re both too cosy to usher in 100 words about annual leave policy. “Hello there” is a bit too Bertie Wooster, while “Hey there” is a bit too Hank from The Larry Sanders Show.
The truth is that when it comes to the ever evolving and ever confusing world of email salutations, there is no right choice. What’s fresh today will be passé by the next Gmail update. What’s risqué now will be stuffy before you realise it.
When it comes to salutations, your choice should be led by your own personal style (or personal brand, if you’re that way inclined). So, what do you go for? Just don’t say: “Yo”.
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