Hello Simon, Friday, November 22, 2002, 1:57:04 AM, you wrote:
S> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- S> Hash: SHA1 S> 'Lo Chiropter Operators, S> In a recent discussion with a friend I was _told_ ;) that 'Re:' used in the S> subject line of an email was an abbreviation for 'Reply' and _not_ S> 'Regarding', and that Re: _shouldn't ever_ be used in the sense of S> 'Regarding' when used in email message Subject fields. The reason I was S> given was that using 'Regarding', whether in abbreviated form or not, in the S> 'Subject:' field, was tautological. Although I can see the logic there I S> didn't think that was a good enough reason in itself. This one certainly opened up a can of worms here < lol > Perhaps the confusion can all be explained in the very flexibility of the English Language that gives it such versatility and also the source of the greatest problems ?? To say that Re: can only stand for *one* thing is just an invalid argument - there can be as many different interpretations of the abbreviation Re: as there are words beginning with Re... and all of them will be valid within the context of use. As the foreign student found when taking a trip to the UK to improve his English ... and the first thing he saw when exiting the train station was "HAIR pronounced SUCCESS" ... and promptly gave up *ever* trying to understand the English language like a native of this crazy island < lol > -- Best regards, Barry2 Using The Bat! v1.61 on Windows 98 4.10 Build 2222 ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
