Should You Really R.S.V.P. These Days?

I am addressing this lesson to not only young adults but to some of my older adult friends as well. When you receive an invitation to a particular function and you see on the invitation the initials R.S.V.P., it stands for a French phrase, "répondez, s'il vous plaît," which means to please reply.

The person sending the invitation would like you to tell him or her whether you accept or decline the invitation. That is, will you be coming to the event or not? For hosts who are planning an event it is very important to know how many guests will be coming to the function so they can plan the appropriate amount of food and beverages, it’s a cost and set up issue. If you have ever planned a party you know what I am talking about.

My feelings are that perhaps we should eliminate R.S.V.P. because not enough people follow the proper etiquette of an R.S.V.P. So maybe if we wrote “Please call me about the details of the party then you can tell me whether or not you are going to come.” This way we get our answer right away. Invitations can come by mail or online, but our response to an invitation should be to reply with either type of invitation.

Have you ever wondered why we use these initials? There have always been rules of courtesy to follow in civilization, many of the practices of Western etiquette, came from the French court of King Louis XIV in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. At Versailles, his palace, Louis XIV had the rules for court behavior written on what the French referred to as "tic-kets," or "étiquette." The tickets either were signs posted at Versailles or the invitations issued to court events with the rules of behavior printed on the back; experts give different versions of the origin. And French was the language of refinement and high society through the 19th century in the United States. But in time
most things change, today I see more frequently on invitations "regrets only" in the invitation, which means that the host will count on your being there unless you tell him or her otherwise.
So B4N. (Bye for now)
No need to R.S.V.P.