Period.

Next week will mark 10 years since Brett sent me an email for the very first time and we became aware of each other’s existence in this world. That email is the stuff legends are made out of. The good kind. He wasn’t the only guy who sent me an email on that site. There were others. Each legendary in his own way, and none of them good. One in particular stood out. His screen name was “The Very Best” and his profile pic was of his abs (at least I assume they were his). Our email exchange went as follows.

The Very Best:

are you sure u didnt steal your pics from one of my dreams?

Me:

Just some advice for the future.

A line like that doesn’t work in a bar unless the girl is drunk and easy. Don’t try such stuff here.

Also, your message is the first impression someone has of you. You should make sure it is your best self. It takes less than a second to make sure you have proper capitalization and punctuation in your message. With proper grammar and spelling, even a cheesy patronizing line can come off as somewhat acceptable.

If you think you are, in fact, the very best, maybe you should try acting like it.

The Very Best:

A line like that doesn’t work in a bar unless the girl is drunk and easy. Don’t try such stuff here.

1. I don’t think that was a line of any sort. Mind helping me find the appropriate definition of the word ‘line’ in that context?
2. this isnt a bar, and what do you know about being drunk or easy, and what does and doesnt work?
3. I’ve had quite a lot of success introducing myself ‘here’ are you sure i shouldnt?

Also, your message is the first impression someone has of you.

actually, people generally tend to see pictures before they see text. my picture was the first impression you could have had of me.

You should make sure it is your best self. It takes less than a second to make sure you have proper capitalization and punctuation in your message.

that might be just one second(im giving you the benefit of the doubt that it is indeed only one second. Its probably closer to 2 or 3) but over time that 1* second adds up. if i were to send an average of 50 messages per day over the course of 25 years that would be 77 days spent making sure my punctuation was perfect. if i lived another 50 years that would be 154 days. to a man about to die on his death bed do you think he would remember all those capitalizations and correctly punctuated sentences, or do you think hed much rather have an extra 5.14 months to live?

With proper grammar and spelling, even a cheesy patronizing line can come off as somewhat acceptable.

there you go. i believe you miswrote when you writ patronizing. unless of course you believe by complimenting your pictures i was condescending.

If you think you are, in fact, the very best, maybe you should try acting like it.

im inherently the very best, acting isnt required. you cant really say something is not the very best unless youve tried it. now can you? i wuve u.

As entertaining as that was, that was as far as it ever got. He was not, in fact, the very best. Brett, on the other hand, had correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in his message. A very good first impression.

Two weeks ago I read a report of a study showing that American undergraduates think it is insincere to punctuate a text message. And now we have a sample of convenience making the rest of us feel like our text messages our insincere if we use punctuation. Undergraduates are easy to do studies with because they are easier to round up than normal people who don’t hang out all day at universities with nothing to do but take surveys about text messaging.

There are no undergraduates at our house. We punctuate our text messages. And some of us do it with great gusto. Sometimes the punctuation is the entire text message (Iddo gets to send voice-to-text messages to Brett and Grandma Giles).

Period.