Cutesy messages can be confusing to people whose first language is not English or who are not familiar with current informal spoken English. The use of “This is

Cutesy messages can be confusing to people whose first language is not English or who are not familiar with current informal spoken English. The use of “This is awkward” in that meaning is, I believe, fairly recent; at least, I don’t remember hearing it when I was young (I’m sixty-five). Someone who learned English out of textbooks probably has never seen it; older native English speakers might be confused by it as well. The developers of a certain password manager used to send e-mails to users that were full of slangy, jokey text. While that may have created a positive impression of the company for younger, native-English-speaker users, I felt that it was very inappropriate for software as important to its users as a password manager. The English in recent e-mails from that company is bland and direct, which is good.