"Dear Gentlefolk," as Gender-Neutral Salutation--A Proposal
Nicholas H. Renton and John E. Carlson
as deliciously quaint yet charming to go back to the word hoard and dig
out this gem--Dear Gentlefolk. I have been using it for a year now.
The word has been in use since the 16th century, and means "persons of
good family and breeding," according to my Random House Dictionary (1987),
p. 797.
What say you, Internetfolk?
By the way, when I applied for my British Passport (I was born an American
of UK parents), I used this salutation; my passport came in a quick week
later. So evidently, it passes official British muster.
Nick Renton
AKA Nicholas Hugh Lindsey-Renton (in UK)
Truly Donovan
>I found "Dear Sir or Madam" to be quite rude and impersonal. It struck me
>as deliciously quaint yet charming to go back to the word hoard and dig
>out this gem--Dear Gentlefolk. I have been using it for a year now.
>The word has been in use since the 16th century, and means "persons of
>good family and breeding," according to my Random House Dictionary (1987),
>p. 797.
>What say you, Internetfolk?
I say it sounds an alarm in my brain that says, "Watch out, you're about to be
had!" It's the same response I have to a stranger who calls me on the
telephone and says, "How are you today?" They never get the chance to find
out.
>By the way, when I applied for my British Passport (I was born an American
>of UK parents), I used this salutation; my passport came in a quick week
>later. So evidently, it passes official British muster.
Hardly what I'd call a controlled test.
Truly Donovan
Truly Donovan
Tourette1
Donovan) writes:
No way. My practice is to completely omit the <Dear> bit altogether as an
old fashioned superfluity. The name and address are already there. Who
particular cares about the "Dear" stuff anyway? It's just meaningless
noise, convention, stuff our eyes pass over. It also takes up two extra
lines on a page, which can be significant when trying to keep your text to
one page.
My format for a letter is thus:
My own name is word processed into the header as a letterhead.
date
name
[attention: . . .]
address
Re
First paragraph . . . .
. . . last paragraph
My name.
Dan Prener
> I found "Dear Sir or Madam" to be quite rude and impersonal. It struck me
> as deliciously quaint yet charming to go back to the word hoard and dig
> out this gem--Dear Gentlefolk. I have been using it for a year now.
[ ... ]
I would find "Dear Gentlefolk" too impersonal, because it is plural.
--
Dan Prener (pre...@watson.ibm.com)
Truly Donovan
>In article <truly.622...@lunemere.com>, tr...@lunemere.com (Truly
>Donovan) writes:
Well, no, I didn't, actually. I wrote something else altogether. When you
delete my words, please delete my attribution, too. By the way, I agree with
you about business letters addressed to the great unknown; depending on the
nature of the letter, I might well forego the salutation.
M Barnard
> In article <truly.622...@lunemere.com>, tr...@lunemere.com (Truly
> Donovan) writes:
>
> No way. My practice is to completely omit the <Dear> bit altogether as an
> old fashioned superfluity. The name and address are already there. Who
Hmmm. My experience as a long-time e-mailer is that I used to do just that
years ago on screen. What I found was that perfectly innocuous messages
were taken wrong by the recipients. I quickly added a greeting tag of some
kind back, changing nothing else, and found that I got flamed a lot less.
What I use in e-mails and dino-mails is "Hi ...". It's less formal than
"Dear ..." and doesn't have the unfortunate connotations as well. After
all, usually co-workers and clients aren't "dear" to me except in the sense
that they are involved in me continuing to get paid.
M
--
bar...@grin.io.org ...........................................................
Stonehenge is the interrupted dance of obelisks/moving too slowly for the
eyes of man to register/like the birth of mountains/like the death of stars.
Nicholas H. Renton and John E. Carlson
(Tourette1) wrote:
Dear Truly Donovan (AKA Tourette1?),
Please continue to do as you wish. Someone like you should keep up with
the times; do not bother about convention, or superfluous, old-fashioned
nonsense.
I merely like the idea that the other person has taken some thought behind
the letter, and appreciate the feeling of consideration for the reader one
encounters in good writers; they are my models. By this I do not mean an
efficient deployment of white space, but a sense that in this
technologically fixated world I am making contact with another person, a
person with whom I could share a laugh, a prayer, or a cry. For we shall
all be one in the grave, with no time for superfluous nonsense, or
laughter, or tears.
Ah! I am getting old! I am but 33, and I feel the world is passing me
by. I shall live but a little longer on this earthly ball, cast in the
mysterious, towering heavens by a receding God. Should there be a soul
with whom I can commune before my existence ends--if but to share our
ignorance and awe at creation--may I grasp this opportunity with open
heart.
Sorry. I waxed a bit philosophical there; I'm merely feeling the pangs of
mortality, and your letter (er, post) was--in a way I am surely was
unintentional, and uniquely personal to me--thoroughly depressing. It's
not your fault; nor did your nauseated reaction to my proposal affect me.
I am a mere animist, worshipping the ways of my forebears, cherishing
their wisdom and experience. I fear the new, and treasure the old, and
feel all that I hold dear eaten by the fine teeth of time.
I fear I must end this missive with a bit of noise . . .
Yours Truly,
Nicholas Renton