Bofski says 'Ahoy!'

How do you start an email? Some people favour ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello” but that doesn’t seem quite right to me. Smacks of America.

The old-fashioned ‘Dear” appears too formal.

My brother just launches in, with no greeting at all, which is somehow a bit forward.

I propose we all try ‘Ahoy!”.

After all, it is the greeting favoured by Alexander Graham Bell for his new telephonic invention. It seems that, in the 1870s, all lines were continually open and the normal way to get a response was to shout ‘Ahoy!’ or ‘Are you there?’

The reason we say “Hello” when we pick up the telephone is all down to Thomas Edison, who blurted it out one day. Edison probably meant ‘Halloo’ anyway, an old rallying cry. Apparently his spelling was atrocious. Thanks to this faux, ‘Hello’ spread like an STD in a sauna and soon even Mark Twain was using it.

That’s all very well for the telephone. But for emails, ‘Ahoy’ is so much better. It calls out to you across a distance. A cry in the wind of the Ether, that hangs there happily waiting for a leisured response.

Yes indeed. Ahoy is quite obviously the best answer.

(from BOFSKI)