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Banned Words and Phrases: Holiday Gratitude Edition
Filed under: Personal Tagged: banned words and phrases, books, usage
Emily writes (once again):
As longtime readers will know, I sometimes ban words and phrases. Though I find many non-standard uses of the language to be useful, lyrical, fascinating, or all three, others are just irksome. Here's one that's on the rise, and at the top of my current list of irritants (aside from the economy, short-sighted capitalists generally, and the futile war against our brute natures): abbreviations of the short, concise, one-syllable word "thanks."
I'm used to (but that doesn't mean I accept) the sign-off "thx." To me, it conveys a lack of complete thanks, a partial, lackadaisical hiss. The sound it makes in my mind is the insincere, singsong "thinkssss" that workmates we've all known like to say with a scrunched-up smirk and bad intentions. I have a feeling that the brilliant David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, whose book Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better I read recently and loved, would not approve of "thx."
Now I'm seeing "thnx." "Thanks" has only six letters. Even the silliest abbreviations are fine with me in instant messaging; that's a fun puzzle of a medium, time is of the essence, and within it I require neither punctuation nor official spelling. But in email, especially business email, seriously, spell out "thanks." Thanks!
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Some writing by Emily Gordon
- Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
- Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
- Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
- Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
- Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
- Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
- Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
- Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)
More clips.
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Comments
I think of "thx" as toned-down version of "thanks". It's a little less profuse than "thanks" or "thank you" and useful, for example, when you're just thanking someone for something routine.
Yes, I see your point! On the other hand, "thanks" was already a toned-down, hastier, and more casual (often in a good, friendly way) version of "thank you," which is longish but still not what I'd call profuse. For me, profuse is more like "a thousand thanks!" or "thank you so much!" To me, "thx" feels a bit halfhearted and incomplete.