To think that people should know what an underscore is?

[ThatPeskyUnderscore]

A few weeks ago, I was given the number of this digital artist from a Facebook friend as I was looking to commission a piece of digital art for my mum. We chatted over WhatsApp, the sketch photos she sent on there were great, and I sent her the sum we had previously agreed upon.

Last week, she asked for my email address (I've got a first_last one) so she could send me a google drive link to the file. I typed it out on WhatsApp and thought that was that. Checked my inbox later that night? No art. Checked it the next day? Still no art there.

I sent her a message asking her if she'd sent it? She said yes. Asked her if she'd sent it to the right address? Yes again. So I asked her if she could check again and she said she'd check when she's free. Two days later, I sent another message asking if she's checked if she'd sent it. She sent me a photo of the email and apparently she'd sent it to first-last!

Told her mine contained an underscore and she told me that her iPad's keyboard didn't have that character. She then copied and pasted the email from my earlier message and I finally got it! Told her thanks but that message has been stuck at 'one tick' for days. I love the piece she drew and was thinking of getting another for myself but if she's 'one ticked' me (think I'm blocked as her picture no longer shows either) then I'm out of luck. And to think all was going swimmingly before the bloody underscore came into play.

Can't believe she's not come across an underscore before and that she thought her keyboard didn't have one! Lol.
If you really like her work, send an email. She was probably really embarrassed so may have blocked you on Whatsapp in the heat of the moment.

YES

YANBU

YANBU

I have had the underscore/hyphen thing too, my personal best being from someone who worked at the same place, had the same underscore arrangement on their/our work email and STILL hyphened it whilst claiming ignorance!

So_weird!

She's blocked you? Out of what, embarrassment? How odd!

When you asked her to recheck, did you say please etc? Or have your messages come across as rude/blunt?

iPad keyboards do have underscores

Our shared family email address has an underscore. I often tell people it's an underscore not a hyphen (to do my bit to avoid failed communications) and I have never come across anyone who cannot cope with them.

It's easier to brand an enquirer as 'difficult' than to face your own tech incompetence (and yes, she is incompetent if she has not discovered that an iPad has 2 screens of symbols behind the alphabet keyboard)

My old email address had an underscore many many years and I got rid of it as I think they are confusing to people. The whole underscore/hyphen thing is difficult.

it sounds like she was either embarrassed or maybe thought you were being rude. It's hard for us to know. It's just one of those things.

I have a firstname-lastname email and have to explain the hyphen sometimes, it's annoying! How can people not know?!

Our shared family email address has an underscore.

Do you mean you have something like [email protected] or [email protected] ?

I have had problems with a waiter not knowing what a cruet is and an allotment group not knowing the meaning of potable. These are just two recent examples and I am beginning to realise that I'm the problem here, but I don't know how I got in to this position. E.g. I didn't study English beyond 16.

My elderly mother has had difficulty with my son's school email address because of this. It doesn't help that her laptop is small and her sight not great.

I don't understand how you can use Google Drive and be a digital artist but not know what an underscore is 🤔

You have to go into the special characters keyboard to find the _ so it's possible she couldn't find it. YABU

I have to send a lot of emails for work, I speak to people from all walks of life.

In my experience the majority of adults can’t spell and don’t know what a hyphen or an underscore is. If you describe a hyphen as a “dash” a lot of them still don’t understand.

I have an underscore in my email address. I sometimes write alongside in brackets (underscore) to make it clear.

I have an underscore in my email address too although I've never had issues.
She seems a bit sensitive to have blocked you just for asking for your commission though!

Our surname has an apostrophe......it's depressing how many times we have to explain it to people

I regularly have to say the minus symbol and the low dash for hyphen and Underscore not sure how you can get that far in life and not know

@Paperreceipt - you are very much not the problem! They’re just everyday words, surely? It amazes me how many people have such a limited vocabulary these days - and then try to blame others when their ignorance causes problems. Who on earth doesn’t know what an underscore is these days?! And if you didn’t, one quick Google would reveal all...

@MamaWeasel

Our surname has an apostrophe......it's depressing how many times we have to explain it to people

My sister has an apostrophe in her surname too! People always assume she's misspelled it or doesn't understand grammar...

@ShaunaTheSheep

You have to go into the special characters keyboard to find the _ so it's possible she couldn't find it. YABU

If you can’t find it then you don’t just send it to a different email and hope for the best surely it would occur to her to copy and paste, which she managed in the end. Odd behaviour!

I find many people don't know what an ampersand is, or an asterisk, ellipsis, parenthesis, etc. These are symbols that most people use every day!

Someone asked my husband for his email address so they could send their cv over for him to look at. He said 'firstname.surname-motorsport' and they said 'great thanks, although how do you spell hyphen?'

@niki26 I had the same. Said my email was firstname_surname and they asked how to spell underscore