This was originally posted on blogger.

I’ve realized that English has more curtesies than I had previously thought. Let me give some examples:

English: “Hey Jonathan! Any chance you might be free on Thursday evening for dinner? I will be in the area so thought I might ask :). No worries if you’ve got something else going on, or will be too tired from work. We can always meet another time! Hope all is well.”

Meaning: “thursday dinner yes or no?”

English: “Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a great start to your Monday. I just realized I had something come up in the afternoon, so it will be hard for me to make the meeting we have. Let me know if there’s any way I can help though! I’ll make sure to read the notes after. See you all soon!”

Meaning: “i can’t make the meeting today”

English: “Hey Johnny! So sorry to bother you, but I’ve just got a word from Sharon that we need to add some extra slides to the Powerpoint for the client. I’ve got a full plate today and tomorrow, and since the presentation is Wednesday, do you think you could manage to do that for me? It would be a huge help. Thanks so much.”

Meaning: “make slides by wed.”

Now, now, you might be saying that all this superfluous add-on information isn’t strictly necessary. Sure, not for super close friends or people you work with very closely. But in most situations I think that amount of buffer isn’t unreasonable. Otherwise, you risk being considered rude, terse, or informal. I recently watched a woman on a plane spend several hours writing messages like the English above, and not doing actual object-level work at all. That’s how society is I guess.