A little while ago, I noticed “truly hip” people (the quotation marks used here are symbolic of dripping sarcasm) throwing around the expression I heart rather than I love. Evidently, it was meant to be cute. As a writer, I found it annoying. I’m fine with heart as a symbol for love. After all, who doesn’t like the ads: I (heart symbol) New York. However, to use it instead of love in a sentence is as contrived as putting little hearts or daisies over your i’s and j’s.
Unfortunately, though I heart is no longer de rigueur (how’s that for contrived!), I now see luv being used in place of love.
Today I scanned three of the biggest dating sites: match.com, Lavalife and Plenty of Fish, and each one had a fair share of dating profiles that used luv instead of love. I luv cycling. I luv toes. I luv taking a perfectly good four letter word and turning it into a 3 letter word with one letter replaced by a phonetically similar letter and I luv doing this for no good reason.
I don’t understand. People are saving all of one character. Why not just write love correctly? What’s the point of writing it as luv? The only thing I can figure is that someone might be trying to attract illiterate singles, but even that doesn’t make sense because an illiterate single wouldn’t be reading an online dating profile.
Instead of using a confusing element to your online dating profile. Be clear. If you love baseball then write you love baseball, not you luv baseball. If you want to exercise some license with language, do it with reason and/or cleverness. Be fun; be clever, but don’t get too trendy. Luv is something that a high school junior might write. You risk sounding contrived, juvenile and/or inarticulate.
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