Sans Vowels, “Yrs” Is Not Abbreviated in its Appeal
Best. Kind Regards. Warmly. Yours Truly. When was the last time a polite salutation got anyone’s attention? When meeting a new coworker from the Venice office over email, Brooklyn copywriter Kerri LaRace was struck by one. David Campbell, her west coast office’s new project manager, had sent her a brief introductory email. “The email was polite, but unremarkable,” LaRace remembers. Save for one thing: he signed it, “Yrs, David.”
Suddenly, LaRace was intrigued. “I hadn’t seen anyone use ‘yrs’ since I was at Oberlin! And in a work context? That was pretty cool,” she says, adding, “I felt like he was saying a lot with just one word. Maybe that he had seen Archers of Loaf open for Weezer or he had watched every episode of My So-Called Life. Maybe he owned back issues of Ben Is Dead or used to carry a lunchbox ironically in high school.”
To be sure, “yrs” is not the only salutation that can convey an instant camaraderie between sender and recipient. Recently, “XO” or its Gossip Girl-approved sibling, “XOXO,” have seen newfound popularity. “Oh my God, sure. If he had singed it ‘XOXO,’ I would have been all ‘I’m Chuck Bass,’” laughs LaRace. “But now David’s a total enigma to me. I Facebook friended him immediately so I could check out his friends.”
