My immediate boss has been gone the last two days on vacation and since she is the one that I turn to when I run out of things to do, I am just basically on autopilot right now. That means I get to think about pointless things, such as the best way to conclude an email.
Sincerely
It's not a bad choice, just a little dated. Sincerely makes me feel like I am writing to a pen pal or something. I had a pen pal for like 2 months in Mexico. I think his name was Jesus and I think he lived in Cuidad Obregon. I visited him once and the only thing I can remember of note was all the graffiti. Not that it was bad, just that it was funny. American slang was spelled phonetically so people could capture that same glorious sound, FUK! Sincerely just seems way to impersonal without putting any though into being impersonal. If one wants to appear impersonal than one should make an obvious effort to do so. Sincerely, no thanks.
Thanks
Thanks for what? Doing what I had asked you to do because it is your job? Maybe, I will assume you are thankful, would work, but not thanks. The best part about ending an email with thanks is that person that sends a reply reading you're welcome. Apparently some people (hinting at an older generation here) don't understand the pointlessness that is a digital welcome. It clutters up my inbox. You're welcome, while polite, is not welcome. (As I wrote this post someone replied with thank you from their Blackberry, hahaha)
Cheers
I am a fan of this one, but I admit I do feel guilty when I use it. I'm not British. Sometimes when I am drunk off a few too many pints I have an annoying habit of speaking with a horrible British accent, but this does not entitle me to use their words. Americans do not say cheers, we say something lame that only seems cool for about a decade like see you later alligator. Cheers is classical, it has stood the test of time. See ya in a while crocodile has not.
Regards
I use this a lot in my business emails. The lazy man's way of saying take care. Take care is inefficient as it uses 2 words. Why use 2 words when you can better sum up the same emotion with one word? I used to think that if I wrote a 10 page paper in high school I would get an A because it was 10 pages. I got a B+ because the teacher likely read 1 page and said fuck this. College taught me the importance of summarization. 10 pages should have been 2, 3 at best.
XOXO
This is not an ending, it is a sequence of letters. Tony Pierce took a survey awhile back to see what people thought each letter corresponded to, a hug or a kiss. Had I answered his survey I would have said the X stands for X, and the O stands for O. If I was going to send hugs and kisses to someone I think I would just conclude my letter with a picture of two people embracing. A picture says a thousand words anyway right?
Goodbye
Who ends an email with this? Maybe your grandma, but that's about it. I think people don't use it because it is too final, like this will be my last correspondence to you ever. Period. It could be quite funny to end all my emails with goodbye to see the responses that I get, if any. Goodbye just sounds like a suicide note, all you have to do is add "world" after it and voila, suicide.
-
The dash. My preferred way of exiting a conversation. You can say so much without saying anything at all. A dash implies that's it, the end. It would look silly if you wrote "the end" at the end of your email but a dash pulls this off masterfully. Did you know you cannot italicize a dash, I didn't until this post. I figured there would be a slight angel towards the right side of my page.
As a side note, can you italicize letters to the left? I keep trying to imagine that and when I do my head keeps bending to the left, hah. I need something to do...
Sincerely
It's not a bad choice, just a little dated. Sincerely makes me feel like I am writing to a pen pal or something. I had a pen pal for like 2 months in Mexico. I think his name was Jesus and I think he lived in Cuidad Obregon. I visited him once and the only thing I can remember of note was all the graffiti. Not that it was bad, just that it was funny. American slang was spelled phonetically so people could capture that same glorious sound, FUK! Sincerely just seems way to impersonal without putting any though into being impersonal. If one wants to appear impersonal than one should make an obvious effort to do so. Sincerely, no thanks.
Thanks
Thanks for what? Doing what I had asked you to do because it is your job? Maybe, I will assume you are thankful, would work, but not thanks. The best part about ending an email with thanks is that person that sends a reply reading you're welcome. Apparently some people (hinting at an older generation here) don't understand the pointlessness that is a digital welcome. It clutters up my inbox. You're welcome, while polite, is not welcome. (As I wrote this post someone replied with thank you from their Blackberry, hahaha)
Cheers
I am a fan of this one, but I admit I do feel guilty when I use it. I'm not British. Sometimes when I am drunk off a few too many pints I have an annoying habit of speaking with a horrible British accent, but this does not entitle me to use their words. Americans do not say cheers, we say something lame that only seems cool for about a decade like see you later alligator. Cheers is classical, it has stood the test of time. See ya in a while crocodile has not.
Regards
I use this a lot in my business emails. The lazy man's way of saying take care. Take care is inefficient as it uses 2 words. Why use 2 words when you can better sum up the same emotion with one word? I used to think that if I wrote a 10 page paper in high school I would get an A because it was 10 pages. I got a B+ because the teacher likely read 1 page and said fuck this. College taught me the importance of summarization. 10 pages should have been 2, 3 at best.
XOXO
This is not an ending, it is a sequence of letters. Tony Pierce took a survey awhile back to see what people thought each letter corresponded to, a hug or a kiss. Had I answered his survey I would have said the X stands for X, and the O stands for O. If I was going to send hugs and kisses to someone I think I would just conclude my letter with a picture of two people embracing. A picture says a thousand words anyway right?
Goodbye
Who ends an email with this? Maybe your grandma, but that's about it. I think people don't use it because it is too final, like this will be my last correspondence to you ever. Period. It could be quite funny to end all my emails with goodbye to see the responses that I get, if any. Goodbye just sounds like a suicide note, all you have to do is add "world" after it and voila, suicide.
-
The dash. My preferred way of exiting a conversation. You can say so much without saying anything at all. A dash implies that's it, the end. It would look silly if you wrote "the end" at the end of your email but a dash pulls this off masterfully. Did you know you cannot italicize a dash, I didn't until this post. I figured there would be a slight angel towards the right side of my page.
As a side note, can you italicize letters to the left? I keep trying to imagine that and when I do my head keeps bending to the left, hah. I need something to do...
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