Too mundane and pointless to qualify as even a mini-rant.
For years, people have been missing the date to wish one of their friends “Happy Birthday.” When they did this, it was the custom to send said friend a greeting card of the “Belated Birthday Wishes” class.
Facebook has probably done some damage to the greeting card industry generally, and maybe even more damage to the Belated Birthday Wishes sector in particular. People routinely offer Belated Birthday Wishes to their friends and acquaintances in the items that appear in my newsfeed.
But here’s the thing. The idea is that it is the WISHES that are Belated, but people are increasingly likely to phrase it as “Happy Belated Birthday,” as though the Jolly Good Fellow being greeted had somehow managed to have his (or her, it could be a her, my use of the term “Fellow” notwithstanding) birthday fall a one or more days later in the year than a chronologically-oriented schedule would dictate.
So let’s put a stop to this, and do what we can to encourage people to abandon the phrase “Happy Belated Birthday” in favor of “Belated Happy Birthday.”
Why no, this wasn’t inspired at all by my failure to announce my triumphant elation about my twentieth anniversary as a Doper (two days ago, jftr). Whatever would give you THAT notion?
