Why do even Tory Cabinet ministers put kisses at the end of their emails?
DO YOU xxxx? Sorry to be impertinent. Perhaps you simply xx or x? I’m not a natural x-er, but it’s hard to resist when everyone else is x-ing all over the place. Besides, if someone x’s you, it would be rude not to x back, right?
Truly, in this age of emotional incontinence, the etiquette of text and email sign- offs is becoming a minefield.
In the ever intensifying race to display more and more emotion, even if it is entirely bogus, we are sending little figurative snogs to perfect strangers.
We are ending the most businesslike emails with a valedictory expression of love and longing when a ‘Kind regards’ would do.
I’m starting to long for the days when all letters culminated with: ‘I beg to remain sir, your most humble and obedient servant.’ At least we knew where we were then.
Now even the simplest of messages can become a car crash of extraneous fervour. Men, interestingly enough, are the biggest offenders. And not just the sorts of men you would think. The buttoned-up, starchy and diffident are at it, too.
Peers of the realm, I find, lavish their texts and emails with obscene amounts of x’s. The more grand and restrained the exterior, the more x’s they seem to spew out.
As a political editor, I know of two pinstriped Tory Cabinet ministers who are mad about x’ing. I’m fairly sure they mean me no passion. But it’s rather awkward to have to send them back pretend protestations of affection so as not to upset them by rejecting their fake feelings.
There appears to be no dividing
Where you place the x is crucial
line between the political parties on this. I remember when I had not been working in politics long, I texted a female Labour minister to ask her to lunch, and she texted back: ‘Lovely! Xx.’
Crikey, I thought, and I had one of those moments of panic when someone you barely know x’s you for the first time and you think, for a split second, that it might be something romantic. This quickly dissipates when you realise they x everybody. Then you feel a bit hurt.
‘It’s just meaningless x to you, isn’t it?’ you think, as you ponder all t hose criss - crosses t hat obviously meant nothing.
Perhaps because of the devaluation of the x, a system has sprung up so people can differentiate the affectionate x from the merely polite ones.
Where you place the x, for example, has become crucial. Convention dictates i t goes
I get stressed by x-upmanship
after the name: ‘Anyway, talk later, Melissa x.’
But a trend is emerging whereby people sign off with the x before their name: ‘Thanks, x Mel.’ I have a hunch that an x placed thus betokens more of a mwah on the cheek than a full-blown smacker.
A selection of the x’s I’ve received this week would seem to bear this out. For example, an email from a lady I ride with sending me information about horse worming included one capital X placed before her name (that’s not love, is it? I mean, I think she really is just sending me worming information and not trying to tell me she wants to leave her husband so we can run away together and set up a B&B in Brighton).
A lunch invitation from a girlfriend featured one small x before her initial (I’m sure that means she’s looking forward to having a bowl of pasta with me, but would cancel if someone she big-x’s invited her out instead).
An email f rom a colleague discussing this article had one large X placed vertically beneath her initial (kooky, but also possibly ironic); while a gossipy email from a male friend ended in three kisses after his name (virtually an affair).
I don’t have a system. I’m just throwing x’s around indiscriminately while the entire world l aughs at my naivety. But what can I do? I’m emotionally illiterate in the simplest of circumstances.
I have no chance when it comes to the etiquette of pretending I slightly love someone for the purposes of ending a three-paragraph email politely. I also get stressed by x- upmanship, which happens when someone texts you two x’s and you text back two and in their next message they up it to three.
Frozen, I sit there debating with myself whether to go to three — the number of love — risk insulting them by sticking at two or bypass the problem by rising to four unilaterally. And what do you do when you really want to tell someone you love them?
I have to put so many x’s on texts to my boyfriend it makes my thumbs ache.
Valentine’s Day was a nightmare. We started the morning with seven x’s on our texts and before long had risen to a number you couldn’t even count without staring at the phone through a magnifying glass.
Just when you think you’ve got to grips with it, the hardcores invent new ways of effusing, for example with those ghastly smiley emotions.
I have a friend who litters her texts with those. She sent me a message the other day with four smilies, two either side of: ‘OK Friday morning is good for me.’
She was only trying to tell me when she wanted to meet up to walk the dogs on Clapham Common.
Dog walking is a nice thing to do. But is there really anything to quadruple smile about? Also, have you had an ‘ xoxoxoxo’ yet? Apparently, that’s kisses and hugs. No doubt there is also a symbol that means ‘sending you a lovely Indian head massage’.
There is no escape from this nonsense. In the future we will conduct our lives entirely through the medium of punctuation.
I should imagine it will soon be normal to receive a text saying: ‘Thank you for paying the congestion charge of £10 for OV54 WYR. Your receipt reference is 00104017. Lots of love, TFL xoxoxo LOL!! :)’ © The Spectator.