There is a language for love and then there’s a language for finding love online—both, I whole-heartedly believe, take trial and error, and countless embarrassingly syntactical mistakes to master. But when learning how to present yourself and tame your feelings for a person you have just scrolled upon online, there is a certain etiquette to foster if you want to rendezvous in the real world.

Just like it took me some time to understand when to use the “Poke” button on Facebook (which is never), it also took me a bit of time to understand when to use and when to respond to messages in my JDate inbox that are “Flirt Messages,” (the standard template of one-liners JDate provides users).

• Do: Send a “Flirt Message” if you want to make someone smile, for a second, to show that you are thinking about them or interested. Follow up with a personal message that showcases a bit of your personality, and above anything else, that you took an extra couple of seconds to browse more than just their selection of glamour shot photos.
• Don’t: Use it as a cop out and send someone a “Flirt message” over writing your own personal note to them. Remember, your first message to someone doesn’t have to be a novel of questions or a five-paragraph essay. It can be a simple remark about something that caught your eye about them on their profile. Your chances will skyrocket that someone will respond back to a personal message over a standard template message.

Read more of Jen Glantz here.

The best part about being on JDate is having other friends who are on it as well and can fully understand what you’re talking about when you start to vent and run away wildly into an online dating story.

The other day my friend was telling me about how she met this guy on JDate and things were going smoothly. I nodded my head in happiness and sighed with a bit of jealousy, hoping that one day soon I could say the same. But then she told me after each date she texts guys saying, “Thank you” and that she “had a lot of fun.”

My eyebrows immediately raised and I let out a giant, “WHAT!” I had always thought it to be girl code that you wait until the guy texts you first after the date. My friend, who is a couple of years younger than me (but obviously a few years wiser), told me no way—that is how you lose them!

She couldn’t be more right.

Do:

• Tell someone you had a good time with them — both in person and then after — via a thoughtful text or a quick phone call. There are so many anxieties that cross our minds before, during and after dates. Alleviate the tension, the guessing and the what if’s through positive affirmations — if you are indeed having positive feelings.

Don’t:

• Hold back. You took the giant step of putting yourself out there, and then, you took an even bigger step by going on blind dates with people you’ve briefly conversed with by chomping down sentences on your keyboard. If you promise yourself not to hold back, to break some of those age old rules, you will have nothing to lose.

Read more advice from Jen Glantz here.

Back in the day, when it was more standard to receive letters in the mail, I used to go bonkers at the site of an envelope addressed to me, decorated with carefully placed postage and saliva-sealed edges. Through the years, that excitement carried on through the finger-print stained notes I’d get passed during class, “You’ve got mail” notifications for new emails (minus, I will add, work emails), and now JDate messages.

The prospective “what-if” that dazzles my imagination when I see the flicker of having a new message lying idly in my JDate inbox is enough to make online dating become an obsession — or at least a mid-afternoon pick-me up!

But not all JDate messages are created equally. Some are laced with time consuming references that some charmer took from my profile in order to prove to me they took the time to “learn more about me” and to critique me, past my selection of selfie-posted pictures. And some, the ones I normally don’t reply to and instantly press delete on, are practically blank messages, one worded, or the absolute worst, contain a scrambled together use of punctuation resulting in a ; ) symbol.

Do: When you’ve landed on someone’s profile who makes you sneak a smile, and while dabbling through their “details” your heart flutters, and your mind travels to frank possibilities of a future with them, or more simply put, a first date—send them a message! Send them a message that has personality, one that uses a variety of punctuation, admiration, and thought. Tell them about something on their page that made you pause and become momentarily intrigued. (This “Do” is also for all my single ladies. It’s acceptable and impressive for you to send a guy that makes your heart wiggle a message. Don’t play hard to get, play go out and get them.)

Don’t: Don’t start and end a message with only three letters: “Hey.” If you’re going to take a humorous or cliché route, like a recent message I received that said the following, “Judging your book by its cover, I’d love to curl up and read the rest,” include more context and more details that begin a fluid conversation (including your name). I would like to be able to respond and not be utterly creeped out.