What Happens When We Throw Away the “I” in “I Love You”

Don’t take a shortcut to insincerity.

I have a pet peeve. (Actually I have many pet peeves but will focus on just one for brevity’s sake.) It has become increasingly common to shorten the phrase “I love you” to “Love you.” Both in verbal and written communication, “love you” has hijacked the more labor intensive “I love you.” I suppose two syllables require less effort than three. Perhaps “Love you” is a little less cringy for a 13-year-old boy to hear his mom shout from the car when she drops him off at soccer practice than “I love you.”

According to the rules of basic grammar everyone learns in middle school, in the sentence “I love you” the “I” is the subjective pronoun, meaning it is the one doing the loving and the “you” is the objective pronoun, indicating the person who is loved. Dropping the “I” dilutes the verb. It says I care but not enough to take ownership of the action.

Eliminating the “I” makes it a little less personal but isn’t that the point of saying I love you? I cannot help but think that when we remove the “I” that we are also distancing ourselves from the sentiment. “Love you” is more casual but also less serious and heartfelt. It rolls off the tongue but I would argue that it also falls flat. Surely, hearing “I love you” from your partner or your friend means a lot more than the expedient “love you.” In my humble opinion, if you are going to say it, mean it.

Spell It Out

Along these lines, I was not surprised when I read a recent study that found that a sender who uses abbreviations in text messages is perceived to be less sincere and is also less likely to receive a reply than a sender who spells words out.

According to the researchers: “Texting abbreviations negatively affect interpersonal communication by decreasing perceived effort, which in turn leads to lower perceived sincerity and responsiveness.”

Image: Fang, D., Zhang, Y. (E.), & Maglio, S. J. (2024). Shortcuts to insincerity: Texting abbreviations seem insincere and not worth answering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Writing “thx” instead of “thanks” leaves the impression that the sender cannot be bothered to communicate in a substantive way. Is writing those two extra letters really that time consuming and exhausting? The subtext of a heavily coded message is clear: I am too busy or too important to concern myself with such trivial matters. As the study highlights, if you want someone to show that you care and to receive a response, make the effort to write “Happy Birthday” instead of HBD.

LOL

In addition to communicating low effort, abbreviations can also lead to confusion. I heard a story about someone who used LOL assuming it meant “lots of love.” It was only after he sent a condolence text to a friend whose father had died and signed off with LOL that he learned it meant “laughing out loud.” Note to self: when in doubt, spell it out.

Not to be a hypocrite but I cannot help but think that the abbreviations below get a pass…

Happy Holidays to You and Yours (NOT HHTYAY)