Member-only story
No, I Will Not Revert with My Resume!
What’s wrong with the word reply?
Okay, maybe I’m an old fuddy-duddy, but there are some expressions I just refuse to use that don’t make sense to me when there is a much better word to choose.
I worked contract on-and-off for years in the IT field. I have a full-time job now, but I still get many job postings in one email address I set up for that.
In 2022 I started getting a lot of job ads with something like:
- Revert me back at the earliest with your updated resume
- Revert back if you are interested
- Kindly do the needful and go through the below mentioned job description and revert with your comfort level
There are hundreds of job emails in the results when I did a scan with the word revert.
Huh?
I realize language is dynamic and English is used differently all over the world. Revert used in this way was probably an error that somebody employed by mistake or out of ignorance once, and it spread in some parts of the business world. Languages evolve. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t sound like fingernails down a chalkboard — at least right now.
From the Dictionary of Oxford Languages: