Is one sentence too short for a milestone birthday?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOne sentence is enough, provided that sentence contains something only you would have written. ‘Happy birthday, have a good one’ is short and empty; ‘a round number suits you better than it has any right to’ is barely longer and it lands. The test is whether the line would still work with the name removed from the top \u2014 if it would fit anybody at all, it will read as a duty. Length is not the problem; interchangeability is. Two sentences is the comfortable limit for a text, and past three you have stopped writing a message and started writing a card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you name the number, or is it safer left out?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nName it if the person has been cheerfully announcing it for a month, and leave it out if you had to work it out from a group chat. Most people mind less about the figure itself than about being defined by it, so the usable middle ground is to mark the occasion without dwelling on the digits: the big one, a round number, a milestone. That keeps the day distinct from an ordinary birthday, which is the whole reason for writing something in the first place. If you do name it, put it in the first half of the sentence and let the second half be about the person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is congratulations the right word on a birthday, or does it only belong to achievements?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOn an ordinary birthday it sounds slightly odd, because nobody has done anything except stay alive. On a milestone it passes, and quite a few people use it \u2014 the round number reads as a marker rather than an accident, and congratulating somebody on reaching it is understood in the spirit it is meant. Two cautions. It works far better attached to something specific than left floating: congratulations on the number, and on the very good order you have arrived at it in. And it is the wrong word entirely for anyone who is dreading the birthday, where it sounds like being congratulated on bad news. When in doubt, many happy returns does the same job and never misfires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is a text enough for a milestone, or does it have to be a card?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFor a milestone most people expect something with more weight than a message that has vanished up the screen by lunchtime \u2014 but that need not mean a card in the post. A text sent early, followed by turning up, is worth more than a card that arrives late. In practice: send the short message on the day so you are not missing from the run of them, and give the card in person if you are going to see them. If you will not see them at all, the card is the one still standing on the mantelpiece a fortnight later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do you make two borrowed sentences sound like your own words?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nKeep the opening and rewrite the second half, because the first sentence carries the greeting and the second carries the meaning. Put in one detail nobody else would use: a thing you have both done, a phrase they always say, a plan neither of you has got round to. Then cut any word you would not say out loud \u2014 ‘may this year bring you’ is card language, ‘I hope this year is easier than the last’ is yours. Read it back at speaking speed. If it sounds like you talking, it will read as though you wrote it, however much of it started somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A big birthday lands and everyone says the same three things about the number. What you want is something short \u2014 a text, two lines in a card, one sentence before the glasses go up \u2014 that still sounds like you wrote it rather than a greetings-card writer. That is a narrower job than it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":5420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3271],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5423,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions\/5423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liverpoolname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=5419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}