"Take this Offline"

Peter Rukavina

Twice in the past month, once in a meeting and once in a telephone conference call, someone has used the phrase “let’s take this offline.”

By which they’ve meant “let’s not talk about this now, let’s talk about this later.”

But the phrase makes no sense to me: if we’re discussing something face-to-face (or telephone receiver to telephone receiver), we’re already offline, aren’t we?

Maybe I’m interpreting this too literally, but it gets even more confusing when you realize that when people say “let’s take this offline,” they often mean “let’s exchange some email about this after the meeting.”

In other words what they really mean is “let’s take this online.”

Am I missing something?

Add new comment

Plain text

  • Allowed HTML tags: <b> <i> <em> <strong> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

About This Blog

Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

To learn more about me, read my /nowlook at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). 

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or a podcast RSS feed that just contains audio posts. You can also receive a daily digests of posts by email.

Search