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ventaNote for geeks: you may be disappointed. This is not about page description languages (see the dots?)
On Wednesday, I wrote what I hope was an entertaining email to one of my colleagues apologising for the fact that, in his absence, I'd broken his mug. It was a rather handsome mug with Brunel on the side, and I inadvertently batted it across the room while sitting on said colleague's desk doing an impression of a surprised North Korean soldier (it was all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hjalfi's fault).
Yesterday, I received an entertaining (and, in the circs, gracious) reply by email from said colleague. It finished:
PS I don't suppose you have a video of the incident do you ?[*]
I don't, of course.
However, it got me thinking: in the days[**] when we did arcane things like writing letters on paper with pens, a postscript was a perfectly sensible thing. It said oh, and here's something I forgot to put in the letter before I signed off. PPS was there for the really absent-minded.
But in email, there is no justification for using a PS. Text can easily be added anywhere in the mail before you send it - anything genuinely forgotten usually has to be sent in a second email. So, either some bizarre sense of honesty makes people add a PS to show that something was forgotten or, much more likely, it has become a Device.
You can stick a humorous afterthought in a PS, and it has more impact than if it had just been trailing along at the end of the letter. You can, if you're feeling particularly guilty, hide a statement you don't want to make in a PS and hope that its impact will be lessened or it won't be noticed at all. You can use it as a sort of Easter egg, an extra smile for a reader who thought they'd finished reading. Or none of the above.
So tell me, o LJ, for I am curious: do you use P.S. regularly ? If so why, and for what reason ? Do you regard it as a epistolatory appendix, doomed in these easy days of cut and paste ?
[*] Note forbateleur: it would appear tpr has the same bad habit with spacing that I do.
[**] Like yesterday, in my case.
On Wednesday, I wrote what I hope was an entertaining email to one of my colleagues apologising for the fact that, in his absence, I'd broken his mug. It was a rather handsome mug with Brunel on the side, and I inadvertently batted it across the room while sitting on said colleague's desk doing an impression of a surprised North Korean soldier (it was all
hjalfi's fault). Yesterday, I received an entertaining (and, in the circs, gracious) reply by email from said colleague. It finished:
PS I don't suppose you have a video of the incident do you ?[*]
I don't, of course.
However, it got me thinking: in the days[**] when we did arcane things like writing letters on paper with pens, a postscript was a perfectly sensible thing. It said oh, and here's something I forgot to put in the letter before I signed off. PPS was there for the really absent-minded.
But in email, there is no justification for using a PS. Text can easily be added anywhere in the mail before you send it - anything genuinely forgotten usually has to be sent in a second email. So, either some bizarre sense of honesty makes people add a PS to show that something was forgotten or, much more likely, it has become a Device.
You can stick a humorous afterthought in a PS, and it has more impact than if it had just been trailing along at the end of the letter. You can, if you're feeling particularly guilty, hide a statement you don't want to make in a PS and hope that its impact will be lessened or it won't be noticed at all. You can use it as a sort of Easter egg, an extra smile for a reader who thought they'd finished reading. Or none of the above.
So tell me, o LJ, for I am curious: do you use P.S. regularly ? If so why, and for what reason ? Do you regard it as a epistolatory appendix, doomed in these easy days of cut and paste ?
[*] Note for
bateleur: it would appear tpr has the same bad habit with spacing that I do.[**] Like yesterday, in my case.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 08:25 am (UTC)Actually, I do think footnotes are (the way I use them) often rather lazy, and at the expense of the reader's convenience means I don't have to try and work my sentences out cleverly.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:09 am (UTC)1 At least, for the kinds that I write.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:13 am (UTC)Except mail sent from work, which does have obligatory ream of legalistic cack. I mostly don't footnote work mails.
[1] see original text above