SIGNING OFF

I had a rather strange sign-off on an e-mail that I received at work the other day: “Nice one” it said, and then the sender added his name. Now, as I’d just sent him the artwork for an advert that we were running, I did think that maybe this was a compliment of some kind, however, as a later exchange of e-mails all had precisely the same cheery message at the end of them, I began to very much doubt that, and quickly realised that this is just the way that person chose to sign off his e-correspondence.

Mind you, my own is not much better. The few people who know me will be familiar with my insistence upon persisting with “TTFN” (“Ta-ta for now”) long after anyone seems likely to understand the 1940s ITMA (“It’s that man again”) reference… Unfortunately, I imagine that my choosing to use a signature that refers back to a radio show from over seventy years ago probably tells everyone I do write to far more about me than I would prefer them to actually know, and explains a lot of my general feelings of suspicion towards much that is common (and vulgar) about the modern world.

But then, signing off from any e-mail seems to bring about that whole “Can open. Worms all over the floor” state of being along with it anyway.

After all, the ancient and much regarded art of letter writing seems to be in the process of being consigned to the dustbin of history, especially now that you need to take out a small mortgage in order to buy a flippin’ stamp, and such things seem to be only there to be loudly mocked by the gadget-junkie generation, by referring to it as “snail mail” or some such, and failing to appreciate what a joy it actually is to receive a genuinely hand-written and heartfelt letter through the post. It speaks of time and care taken, of thoughtfulness and consideration, many of which traits seem to have lost their place in the hurly-burly of our world nowadays which is so insistent on having immediate responses to everything and access to information now, now, NOW!!!

But yet there used to be rules for that sort of thing. You knew where you were with your “Yours Faithfully”, “Yours Sincerely” and, if you were really lucky, “Yours Truly”. There was order to be found in a mad universe and you knew precisely where you were and what was expected of you, and whether your letter was “official” or more intimate and “personal”, you knew precisely how you were supposed to go about the small matter of completing it.

Nowadays such formality is to be frowned upon in “It’s-only-an” e-mails and to use such sign-offs is considered to be downright peculiar by the public at large. Meanwhile we seem to be perfectly happy to tolerate any number of downright offensive “greetings” that potter about in the Fizz’n’TwitWorlds, most of which are barely repeatable in family-f***ing-friendly territory such as we are currently a-lurkin’ within, and it’s seen as “good” or “hip” to be “bad” or “nasty” because everyone knows that you don’t really mean it…

Unless of course you do… In which case kindly f*** off…

Sometimes I am truly amazed at some of the words that people use in their “friendliest” of banters in some of the sites which I feel that I have to soil my fingertips by visiting. Perhaps, I like to think, that, even now, people are generally naïve enough to believe that they really are only addressing one person when the whole world is actually watching, but I doubt it. “Would you talk like that to their faces?” I often wonder “...or if your Grandma was in the room with you?”

Sadly, in a lot of cases, I think they still might and, equally sadly, I think that I’m just beginning to believe that nobody else seems to care about such things any more.

So, I’ve managed to get myself all sidetracked again, haven’t I…? Where were we…? Oh yes… When it comes to signing off, there’s still the tiny matter of which to choose…

((Thinks - picture goes all wibbly-wobbly during the transition)) Which to choose…? Which to choose…? Which to choose…?

“Cheers” seems to be suitably inoffensive as does a simple “All the best”, although I am frequently more than tempted to add an extra “...est” to that particular one for “hilarious” comic effect and to try and persuade the recipient about what a “wacky” guy I still am, despite being an office-working drone in the great hive of life. After all, we all need to convince everyone, especially when we work in a field remotely orbiting the world of so-called “creative arts”, that we haven’t quite lost our sense of “fun” yet…

“See you” and its stablemate “See you soon” seem to imply some kind of later intimacy that, to be honest, is unlikely to occur, and “Loads (or lots) of love” seems a touch too informal for most business situations (unless you work in sales, of course… In which case it seems to be positively restrained… as you ought to be…!) and has been known to be mistaken for its acronymic twin LOL in certain unfortunate circumstances.

I have known people who have worried themselves into something of a tizzy over finding a suitable e-mail signature, but once someone has picked one, I do tend to find that they will stick with it, even under the most inappropriate circumstances. So much so, in fact, that you seldom need to check that it is their name at the bottom of the document any more.

Meanwhile, whilst we’re on the tricky little topic of e-communication, I’ve noticed recently that I have a tendency when typing, in my own one and occasionally two-fingered way, to keep on hitting the same wrong keys and that certain words are constantly being mis-typed. My current “favorite” (if that is the word…) is one that might cause quite some offence if it remains unspotted, as I have started to accidentally write “shorty” instead of “shortly”, as in “The artwork should be with you shorty” which, if it were to arrive in the wrong inbox - like the one belonging to Tiny Tom - might prove problematical.

It’s those most regularly made typos that are, after all, the most bothersome. After a while, you see, you begin not to notice them, and that worm-filled can runs the risk of popping open unexpectedly again.

In a similar, vaguely related vein, a bit of advertising nonsense recently popped up in one of my inboxes asking me to “Perk up your ears!”

Really?

Is this because internet filters don't accept the word “prick”...?

Until next time…

TTFN

M