A man writing a funny birthday message to a woman \u2014 does that change which jokes are available?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt narrows the field, and it is easier to work with that than to argue about it. Anything about how she looks, what she wears or how old she is reads differently coming from a man, even when it is meant warmly, and especially in writing, where there is no face and no tone of voice to carry the intent. Those three are the most common ready-made jokes about a woman’s birthday, which is why so many men end up staring at an empty message. Everything she does stays wide open: her schedule, her opinions, her third coffee, the fact that she will not sit down at her own party. Put the joke on the situation or on yourself, leave her the hero of it, and it reads as generous from anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are friendly at work but I have never actually joked with her in person. Should the first one be in writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMatch the register you already have with her rather than debuting a new one. Humor that has never been tested face to face has no track record, and a birthday message is a poor place to run the first experiment: she has nothing to measure it against and will read it in whatever mood the morning handed her. If the two of you trade dry remarks about the schedule, a dry remark about the schedule is safe ground. If every exchange has been friendly and straightforward, write friendly and straightforward with one light line at the end. The upgrade runs the other direction anyway. Say the funny thing out loud sometime that is not her birthday, and by next year it writes itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some women love being roasted and some hear it as criticism. How do you tell which she is before you hit send?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWatch what she does with her own material. If she jokes about her own inbox, her own driving, her own third coffee of the morning, that door is open and you can walk through it. If her humor runs on situations rather than herself, keep yours there too. The safe default costs nothing: put the joke on the day, the office, the calendar or yourself, and put her in the sincere half. Whichever way you calibrate it, land warm. A roast with no affectionate line after it reads as a complaint on a screen, because there is no face and no tone of voice doing the work that they would do across a table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She throws her own birthday party every year and does all the work. What do you write to somebody like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPut the joke exactly there. She books it, cooks it, invites everybody and then spends her own party carrying plates, and being the only person in the room who notices that out loud is worth more than any line about candles. Recognize the work rather than admiring the result, which is the difference between a compliment and a thank-you. Timing matters more than usual here. On the day itself she has no attention to spare, so the funny message lands better the morning before, while she is still mid-list. And write something that holds up on a second read, because a host does not get to her cards until the next day, when the house is wrecked and everyone has gone home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can the joke involve her kids, her dog or her boss, or does that drag somebody else into the message?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe dog is always safe. Her kids are safe when the joke is about her surviving them rather than about them, which is a narrow line but an obvious one once you look for it: she can be outnumbered, they cannot be the punchline. Her boss is a live wire, because anything typed at work can be forwarded, screenshotted or read over a shoulder, and a joke that was funny in the hallway looks very different in writing. The working rule is to joke about the situation she is in, never about people who are not there to answer. If it would embarrass her when the card gets read out loud at the table, leave it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You have had the message open for ten minutes and everything you type sounds like it came printed on a mug. Funny is the hardest register to get right in writing, because the tone that reads as affection out loud can land flat or faintly mean on a phone screen, and she will read it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":590,"featured_media":4777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2415],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4780,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions\/4780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brooklyn-name.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=4776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}