Cross purposes (Picture: Shutterstock/ Ella Byworth)

Etiquette can be a minefield sometimes.

Which is precisely why society has handy little conventions to guide us – essentially so we don’t need to think for ourselves.

Meeting someone new in a business context? Shake hands!

A person you barely know sneezes? Say ‘bless you!’


Somebody is behind you at the supermarket checkout? Quick, grab one of those divider thingies!

These laws are ancient and immutable as the cosmos.

But the age of electronic communications has created a bewildering jungle of new protocols for us to navigate.

And lately I’ve begun to fret – does signing off emails, texts, WhatsApps and so on with a jaunty ‘x’ make people think I’m a sexual predator?

U wot M8? (Picture: Getty)

In my head that innocuous little cross lends a playful, zesty character to the preceding message.



Even if I’m asking a mundane question, or nagging someone to do something, that impish lower-case ‘x’ lets my correspondent know that, hey, we’re cool. I remember you’re a flesh and blood human being too.

Is that creepy?

The majority of you reading are probably are on board with what I’m saying, but remember I’m a grown-ass man with a wife and kid.

Quite often, as part and parcel of my working day, I’m emailing back and forth with PRs and interns.

Most of whom are female, many of whom are a decade or more my junior.

What if one of them thinks I’m trying it on? Even if I’m not, isn’t the perception that I plausibly might be toxic enough nowadays?

I cringe every time my old man calls a shop assistant ‘sweetheart’, but to be fair he never puts kisses on text messages. Am I the perv?

And to be clear, if somebody I’m messaging doesn’t reply with a kiss I generally take the hint and proceed likewise.

But I must say it feels a bit joyless to do so.

Am I over-thinking this?

Future historians might judge the kisses I add to the bottom of work emails as old-fashioned as a wolf-whistle in the canteen, or slapped arse by the photocopier.

Or, who knows, standards will slip so far that professional emails are routinely signed off with dick pics.

Like I say, etiquette is a minefield.

MORE: Why I never send kisses to my colleagues

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