Authors Electric

Now we’re home from holiday, I’ve stopped worrying about my lack of Spanish , but the niceties of how we use our own language are sometimes just as mysterious as a foreign tongue.  Maybe it’s a preoccupation of the elderly, but I’m always aware of the register we use depending on our audience. At the extreme ends of the scale, an application for a job or a pitch to a publisher is always more formal than a thank you note or reply to an invitation, unless we are making a conscious effort to be matey. Informality, after all, is a characteristic of speech rather than writing, or should that be ‘was’?  Still nice to get some things in writing The universal use of email (and all communication via keyboard)   has gradually blurred the lines. It was once the case that a stranger contacting me at work would start with ‘Good morning’ or ‘Dear’. These days I might use ‘Dear’ for a first cautious approach but anything after that would be ‘hello’, gradually giving way to ‘hi’...