Birthday messages and greetings in your own words

A ready-made message has to be edited by hand, and that is exactly where it shows: a name pasted into someone else’s sentence, “I” in a card from the whole team, a jokey line in a note to your boss. Here the text is assembled for your settings — occasion, who the person is to you, tone, voice and length — from separate phrases, so it is not circulating online word for word, and any part of it can be replaced.

Tap the phrase: it gets highlighted, and actions appear below the text. Tap it again or choose “Swap” to put another phrase from the same slot in its place — an opening line for an opening line, a wish for a wish. “Keep” pins the phrase so it survives “Another version.” “Remove” shortens the message. Earlier versions are not lost: the ‹ › arrows bring them back.

An English name does not tell the builder much, so it goes by the role — Mom, Grandma and Wife are “she,” Dad, Grandpa and Husband are “he” — and for everyone else it makes a guess that can be wrong. Switch “She” or “He” next to the name field: the phrases stay the same, and the few words that depend on it (birthday girl or boy, son or daughter, Sis or Bro) change at once.

Yes: the “From us” switch turns “I hope” into “we hope” and “my” into “our,” and lines that only work from one person, such as “My love,” or “Happy anniversary to the love of my life,” drop out of the text. Put who it is from in the “Signature” field — for example, “Your friends from the sales team”: it becomes the last line and goes onto the card.

Choose “Verse”: the text becomes original rhyming four-line stanzas about the occasion and the wishes, with the name in the greeting line above them (“Dear Anna,”). The name is not put inside the lines — that would break the rhythm and the rhyme. Length sets the number of stanzas, from one to three.

Open “Greet several people” and enter the names, one per line. Each person gets their own text: phrases already used for one person are not given to another while the phrase bank lasts. You can copy everything at once, save it as one .txt file or download a .zip of cards with the names on them.

One specific thing about this person: “thanks for that talk in March,” “your lasagna is still the best,” “good luck with the thesis defense.” It goes into the text as its own sentence before the sign-off and turns a general greeting into a personal one. If you enter an age for a birthday or milestone birthday, it is worked into the opening line or one of the wishes.