I'm a New Yorker.

Grammar Girl here.

I'm a New Yorker.

And you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

Writing, History, Rules, and Cool Stuff.

Today I have a segment about why we use X's and O's to mean hugs and kisses and a

family-legged story about chickens.

Let's get started.

If you want to try something fun this Valentine's Day, try typing XO into a Facebook comment.

It's shorthand for hugs and kisses and the text becomes highlighted and if you click

on it, the little animated hearts float up on the screen.

But how did XO, XO, come to mean hugs and kisses?

Well, the truth is that nobody is absolutely sure.

Let's talk about the X first.

The earliest citation for X is a kiss and the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1763.

And the highly-quodible Winston Churchill used it in 1894, but he also felt the need

to define it.

He signed a letter, many kisses, XXX.

One theory is that if you use your imagination, the X looks like two people kissing, like the

mouth on the left, meeting a mouth on the right to create the complete X.

But there's also a religious theory.

The letter X has been the symbol for Christ since the time of the Greeks because it's

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