Why do teens say, ‘Fax, No Printer’?

Is your teen saying, “Fax, no printer?” Yeah, it has nothing to do with old-school technology.

According to a glossary published by Later.com, “Fax, no printer” is another way of saying “Truth.” As the website states, “When someone says ‘fax,’ they are essentially saying, ‘I agree with what you just said, and it’s so true that I would transmit it via fax without needing to print it out.’” The phrase, “No printer” drives the initial statement home.

“‘Fax, no printer’ is more a play on words ... than a cognizant recognition of old media technology,” Benjamin Burroughs, an associate professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells TODAY.com. “Many kids have no understanding of what a fax machine is.”

Burroughs adds: “The word ‘fax’ sounds like ‘facts’ so if you want to affirm what someone says, you’d say, ‘Facts.’ It’s very similar to ‘No cap’ which means, ‘No lie.’”

Kelly Elizabeth Wright, a postdoctoral research fellow in language sciences at Virginia Tech, tells TODAY.com:

“It follows from similar youth-aligned usage, such as ‘I’m picking up what you’re putting down’ and ‘say less,’ giving us a window into the long time tradition of publicly and jovially hyping up those with whom we align.”

Wright says inspiration for the slang is older than a fax machine itself.

“The use of ‘fax’ as a fun phonetic play on ‘facts’ dates back to at least 1837, as documented by the Oxford English Dictionary,” Wright tells TODAY.com. “It seems that ‘fax, no printer’ is just the latest development in metaphorical, figurative, and playful usage of this sound-symbol coincidence.”

Wright adds, “In more contemporary interpretations, ‘fax’ for ‘facts’ is variously attributed to youth language, Black vernaculars, and New York varieties of English.”

Wright traces “Fax, no printer” to the 2014 song “Post To Be” by Omarion and Chris Brown with the lyrics, “And that’s fax, no printer.”

“The phrase itself is likely a bit older than that because many of these terms are used in small communities or across specific demographics (like younger people) before being taken up by mass media,” she says.

There’s more to “Fax, no printer.”

According to Know Your Meme, TikTok creator @Briaalanaa stated “Copy, no translate” in a 2021 video: “Hey yo! The person that sent you this wants you to know … no cap, fax, no printer. Copy, no translate.”

"Once you’ve played out ‘fax’ and ‘fax, no printer’ you need something else that adds value to the conversation,” explains Burroughs. “New iterations always pop up.”

Do kids want their parents to understand their lingo?

“There’s a bit of gate-keeping with parents and teachers and wanting to maintain an insider ‘wink-wink’ identity,” says Burroughs. “It’s exciting to produce new ways of relating and communicating, but it’s disconcerting to parents when they don’t understand what kids are saying.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com