Smooth replies to hey

Most people who send a plain hey are not making a judgement about you yet. They are sending a low-cost signal to see whether the match is alive and whether you will respond. The message carries almost no information about how interested she is, and reading a lot into its length or punctuation tends to go wrong. What it does tell you is that she is willing to start, and she is watching to see what you do with the opening.

So the useful question is not whether she is keen. It is whether your reply gives her a reason to keep going. Look at what you already know about her. If you have a previous exchange, a mention of a place, a hobby or a joke, that is your material. If you have nothing, you have to create a small concrete thing in the reply, such as a point of view on something around you, rather than a general check in.

A reply that works here usually belongs to one of two families. The first is the callback reply, which points at something real from earlier, such as a place you both mentioned or a thing she said about her week. Its job is to show you remember, and it gives her an easy thread to pull. A draft is a callback reply if it refers to a specific detail you can both see, and it should leave out any attempt to recap the whole earlier conversation.

The second is the observation reply, which says one concrete thing about the present moment or your current situation and then stops short of a question or ends with a light one. Its job is to make the exchange feel like two people in the same place rather than two strangers filling a gap. You can tell a draft is this kind when it describes something happening right now, such as the weather, what you are doing, or something odd you noticed, and it should leave out any compliment about her or any heavy question about what she is looking for.

A third family, the direct question about her day, is weaker than it looks. It is easy to answer with one word, which is exactly why it stalls.

Send your reply at a time when a normal person might be reading texts, which usually means the same part of the day she sent hers. A reply sent at 2am reads as either lonely or pushy, and a reply sent an hour after her hey often lands better than one sent instantly, because it does not look like you were waiting by the phone. Do not chase her with a second message if she goes quiet, because a quiet few hours in a fresh match is normal and rarely means anything.

If she replies and then goes quiet, the next move is to wait a day or two before sending anything, and then a single light message tied to something new rather than a repeat of the first one. If she does not answer that either, stop. Two unanswered messages in a row is a clear enough signal that the conversation is not going to start, and a third message at that point only adds awkwardness on both sides. Let the match stand unanswered and move on without making it a bigger thing.