Hillary Clinton, and the surprising history of elder statesmen writing like tweens

What year do you think this was written? "I wish you wd tell me how u.r. when u. write."

Texting with Hillary.
(Image credit: Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Images courtesy iStock, Hillmoji keyboard)

Since Hillary Clinton's private emails as secretary of state have been released, people have been abuzz about their contents. The State Department not knowing about her private email! Her inability to get a fax machine working! And gefilte fish — where are we on that?

But there's also the way certain things are spelled — or not. There are the brisk abbreviations by Clinton herself: "Pls tell Joe I left the book w Chris in the sit room"; "Thx. Also, I tried Doug twice but it went right to voice mail"; "I'm leaving here on Wed and I'll be at home over the weekend so I'd rather get it over w in the morning." But then there's her aide Huma Abedin, addressing the secretary of state not as Madam Secretary, not as Mrs. Clinton or Ms. Clinton, not even as you, but — over and over again — as u: "Can u do in the next 30 min?" "R u up?" "pls call jake when u can thru ops"; "Ur email must be back up!!"… and so on, email after email after email.

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James Harbeck

James Harbeck is a professional word taster and sentence sommelier (an editor trained in linguistics). He is the author of the blog Sesquiotica and the book Songs of Love and Grammar.