Small talk's a bitch, so let's cut to the chase: Sometimes pleasantries are necessary, especially over the telephone. When the first calls were made in the late 1870s, someone had to invent a greeting that didn't rely on visual cues; without a formal introduction or a handshake to kick off conversation, there was no way to tell you were connected. Alexander Graham Bell was a fan of answering the phone with "Ahoy, Ahoy," but strangely, the phrase didn't stick. (Yes, that's where Mr. Burns got his greeting.) Within a couple years, "Hello"—the preferred salutation of Bell's rival, Thomas Edison—became standard.
"Telephone talk has discrete boundaries at points of opening and closing," says Julia Gillen, a lecturer in digital literacy at Lancaster University. 
And those conventions are imbued from the crib. In Gillen's study of language-learning in young children, she found kids' earliest play with telephones would "tend to begin with 'hello' and end with 'good-bye.'"
So what should you do if a spotty patch of cell coverage lops off the call before the closing bookend? ("Well, I really should get going. I'm trying to ...") Even if there's not much left to say, the redial button is obligatory. Otherwise, the likely effect is either confusion (think colleagues or grandparents) or insult (think boss or boyfriend). "Communication is not just about accomplishing tasks," says Scripps College of Communication dean Gregory Shepherd. "It's about managing relationships." So call back to say good-bye, even if you had them at hello ... hello?
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