Pls meaning: please, typed in a hurry

Please, three letters shorter

Pls is a written abbreviation of please. Dictionaries list it as texting shorthand, and you say it as “please”. Nobody reads it out as “pulls”, or if they do, they do it once.

Where pls turns up

Pls usually comes right before a request, as in “pls review” or “pls approve”. You’ll see it in chats, texts, quick emails and subject lines. A reply that’s only “pls” is begging.

Pls, plz and pls.

Each spelling of pls carries a little meaning of its own.

Pls in a subject line

Pls is handy in a subject line like “Pls approve: Q3 invoice 4471”, where space is short. With no greeting in front, it also reads like an order. The first line of the email can say hello.

Abbreviations read as less sincere

In eight experiments, texters who used abbreviations seemed less sincere. They also got fewer replies, and shorter ones. In more than 200,000 conversations on a dating app, chats with more abbreviations in them were shorter.

That surprised the researchers. They had expected short forms to feel casual and close.

Most people don’t see it coming

Almost everyone abbreviates. In the first survey for that research, 99% did. Few expect it to cost them.

Text speak in the work inbox

Text speak in work email annoys plenty of the people reading it. Pls comes from the same habit of typing as little as possible.

The three-letter saving

Pls saves three keystrokes. The reader notices all three, most of all in a first message to a stranger.

Pls advise

“Pls advise” is the short form of please advise, and it sounds even more impatient than the full phrase. Put a deadline on it, as in “pls advise by EOD”, and it reads like a ticket being escalated.

Pls and the rest of the chat shorthand

You’ll often find pls next to thx, np and fwd. A message made of all four reads like a telegram from someone running for a train.

An email that opens with the formal as per and then says pls sounds stiff at the start and rushed by the end.

When to type the whole word

Type please in full the first time you write to someone, and in any request to someone senior. Anything with a deadline gets the full word too. Keep pls for people who already know you’re polite, or for a delivery driver.

If you’re up against a deadline and want to type something blunt, the how to professionally say phrasebook gives you a calmer way to word it. Our corporate jargon dictionary also translates TIA, SGTM, NRN and FWD into plain words.

A chat message with pls in it

#design-requests, 4:51 pm

Can someone pls please export the logo as a PNG with a transparent background. The agency needs it by 9 tomorrow, and the one on the drive has a white box around it.