as you were
Posted on April 5th, 2010
I love this as as sign-off. “As you were”. 
My mate Gez says this to me when he hangs up from a good, deep chat. And someone emailed me this week, out of the blue, with some random feedback (actually, the delightful Gala Darling‘s ex boyfriend to give his thoughts on my contact submission form design….there you go)…and when he was done he wrote “as you were”.
Has anyone noticed this? An emerging linguistic nuance? It’s what “This is how I roll” was two years ago?
As you were. It’s a delicate offering. It says, I’ve just interrupted you briefly to share a message and now I invite you to return to where you were at, nothing demanded of you. This was an unconditional communication.
My drill sergeant used to say both those lines to me. It was more an operational necessity than delicate offering but who knows?
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April 7th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Paul, as always, nice insight
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I’m with Paul on this one – one of the origins of the phrase is definitely the military (anyone who has done time will recognise it), starts out with drill but ends up being used in various contexts, with appropriate variations in tone of course. Short way of saying ‘go back to doing what you were doing before’ or similar … so umm ‘as you were’ ?
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