NOT EVEN DOCTORS UNDERSTAND ‘RSVP’
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a retired physician from an academic medical center, and I continue to teach interested residents. I led a weekly seminar for senior residents last year. They worked very hard, and at the end of the year, my wife and I invited them to a reception at our home. The invitations included an RSVP.
Very few responded, but they all showed up!
I asked them why they had not responded, and the majority of these highly educated fifth-year residents -- who have all completed college and four years of medical school -- did not know the meaning of “RSVP”!
GENTLE READER: The fact that colleges, medical schools and medical residencies do not teach “RSVP” does not surprise Miss Manners. But surely they should teach students the obligation to answer questions, including ones such as “Would you like to come to a reception?”
Or perhaps they should not accept candidates who lack the common sense to figure that out on their own.
That said, she confesses to a dislike for the term “RSVP” -- especially when it is used as a noun or verb, and when it is rendered in capital letters instead of, properly, “R.s.v.p.”
Why are we using a French acronym? Why can’t we just say “Please respond”? Perhaps then, your students would have understood.
Whether they would have answered is another matter.
***
(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)
