Signing off

There was a time when letter-writing was a long-drawn process. Careful writing (what with no back-space possible) and an appropriate sign off in keeping with overall tone. A writer who wished to state that the recipient’s views were asinine would first express views in no uncertain terms. The letter would be checked for spellings and grammar, lest the recipient find fault with the method. Errors were corrected and the letter rewritten. In the course of rewriting, the author would check for tone and reword the content. It can be no surprise that the long drawn process led to conveying that the recipient’s viewpoints were in fact of the highest order and only a fool would disregard them. Finally satisfied with the outcome, the letter would be signed off with a formal ‘yours respectfully’ or the informal ‘yours truly’ or a plain ‘thanks’.

That was a time that when a castigating letter ended on a formal tone and if the message was allowed to don the garb of the cheerful advisory sort, best wishes would be added at the end. Garbing a message required time and mental work. Such letters were not prepared in a flash and sent with the click of a button.

Came the computer and in its wake the email, spell check and automatic signature. Messages started to flow at unimagined speeds. Sending a mail became an involuntary action of the hand. The need to check errors was done away with and with that went the process of reading and perfecting the art of signing off in a tone consistent with the content.

The writer did not intend to mock the recipient; the reader experience was inadvertent. The finer mental processes were never employed to verify the expressions. The phantom hand clicked the ‘send’ button faster than the eye could see. So it came to be that the writer who called a person an unseemly bag of gas, signed off with the advice “Smile always”, omitting to view the content in line with the sign-off. Another was dumped by a terse email signed ‘Ever Yours’.

And so it was that I received a mail about an error that spelt trouble and stress for many days to come. My mood was sought to be uplifted with a smiley wishing me a great day ahead!