Talk:Poison pen letter

[Untitled]

This is not an informative article. The only useful part of it is the defintion. The rest can easily be discovered intuitively. Rintrah 08:16, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

TEXT

I thought poison pen referred to the use of letters cut out from magazines and newspapers, like you often see in cliche ransom notes, etc...i thought that was what "poison pen" was...more of a font than the focus of the letter itself. is there a different name for this?--Atticus2020 07:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

A collage generally. Abacusbox (talk) 14:18, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's right, but it's anachronistic, nobody has time or at least actually does it anymore, so it's dropped out of the popular consciousness, and now morphed into just a malicious missive, the original thing being forgotten although this has occurred in living memory. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 05:29, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

This was also one of the definitions I was familiar with. I have added a see also link to the Ransom note effect which covers this usage. –dasime (talk) 12:48, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Excision

The text below was in the article uncited, and, while nice pop psychology, hardly indisputable. I have therefore removed it.

'The subliminal purpose, however, is to rectify a perceived wrong. Thus, from a psychological point of view, they reveal more truth about the writer than about the recipient.'

71.106.115.204 06:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Picture Description

The four dots on the picture have the connotation [ass]. The German equivalent for which is "Arsch," one letter to much. Probably idiot ("Depp") would fit better here. 84.56.122.88 (talk) 22:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought the German "Sie ...." meant "Sie Esel" (four dots, four letters), and that the mask was to represent the missing word. Ass is used as a derogatory term in English (and of course, at least in American English, sounds like a shortened from of asshole), donkey is not. <KF> 02:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)