CU soon, MTC then, don't RSVP as NAN

OPINION: Words are changing, like we no longer think of dishing up dinner, writes Pat Veltkamp Smith in this week's And Another Thing.

Around here we are either building a meal, thinking of five plus and all that.

Or, more optimistically, we are plating it, the direct result of watching interminable cooking shows in which contestants are told to stand away from their bench having plated something that's about to be tasted.

It is all tense and tear-making, a far cry from real life.

But plating does add the professional touch with care as the food is set out, no-one having the luxury of doing it himself, portions arranged beautifully with garnish and side drizzle and comments awaited.

As our words change so do we.

Tiny little phone faces limit texts to mini words so that CU is a sentence, neither a threat nor a promise, just an abbreviated fact.

We have always shortened things so that we know quickly what to do, like PTO or MTC for please turn over and more to come.

And the number of these abbreviations grows with texting so that only in context can you be sure if LOL is lots of love or laugh out loud.

Today, unless you are told, you really don't know.

But on passing on a long complicated piece of reasoned thought to one of my brothers I was startled to get it back with TLHR written on it – I think maybe prefaced by the word sorry but am unsure of that.

TLHR? Too long haven't read – a damning comment on what he saw as remarkably turgid prose.

It was, of course, but imagine not reading, so not knowing, unless someone does an abbreviation.

Which I did.

RSVP is meant to get a quick response, but often doesn't.

Another line does, in a way.

If you send a note but want nothing further of or from it, like a greeting or a good wish that's sufficient in itself, say at Christmas, then writing, NAN – no answer needed – should remove a burden, people relieved of the need to reply.

I know. They'll say what's NAN? And you have to write again but it will catch on, like people do know what LOL means and when.

Like now I end, LOL, but quickly, leaving no room for TLHR.

» Pat Veltkamp Smith was Southland Times women's editor until 1997 and is a former president of the Southland Justices of the Peace Association.

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