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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 11:11 am (UTC)I do regularly use "PS..." as a subject line if I realise I've forgotten something, though usually not if what I forgot was to attach a file.
I wonder what percentage of emails which say "see attachment" don't actually contain the attachment. I know quite a high proportion of mine don't.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:16 am (UTC)I have it turned on but haven't forgotten an attachment to test it yet.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 02:01 pm (UTC)It gets confused if you reply to an email from someone who sent an attachment and quote the sentence with the word "attached" or "attachment" in it. That's how clever it is!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 11:59 am (UTC)