Closing email with “thanks” gets the most replies
blog.boomerangapp.com
blog.boomerangapp.com
"Thanks" garners many responses because people use it in emails that make reasonable requests with a good chance of response.
My favorite valediction is still "I am, &c.," which is short for "I am your humble and obedient servant". Not sure whether my colleagues appreciate it as much as I do...
I've never heard that before, is it cultural/regional? (Compared to US)
https://archive.org/details/lettersjohnson01hilluoft/page/n2...
As far as I can tell the "&c." version was popularized by the 1944 novel "Anna and the King of Siam".
So it literally means "I am, etc.", which I assume only expands to "I am your humble and obedient servant" in a humorous way. Might be taken the wrong way.
"etc" is an abbreviation for and contraction of "et cetera", Latin for "and so on". "&c" is, I think, an artifact of a particular time in history when writing skills were spreading rapidly but the process of writing itself was cumbersome and time consuming, necessitating macro-type abbreviations like that. It's not particularly archaic.
I have been noticing recently that certain ampersands contain (to me) very clearly readable "et" abbreviations, while others are more stylized.
I feel like I'm previewing the 22nd Century's review of "LOL", "WTF" and "THOT".
My wife might be offended if I implied being her humble and obedient servant was only an etc.
The inference is that the second book (Airs &c &c) will also be of Airs, Minuets, Gavotts, and Reels (or something similar).
Also, 18th-century letters routinely end with some snowclone of "your most humble and obedient servant", with many writers eliding some or all of it with &c since it was understood.
I sometimes use as a formal valediction:
Loren Ipsum Dolor etc. I remain (paragraph break here, no punctuation)
Very truly yours,
[My Name]
perhaps overly appropriate/accurate for messages to one's boss/employer
BTW, interesting fact: "The Venetian word for "slave", s-ciào [ˈstʃao] or s-ciàvo, derives from Medieval Latin sclavus, a loanword from Medieval Greek Σκλάβος, related to the ethnic "Slavic", since most of the slaves came from the Balkans."
I'll be extremely sad if one day we'd have to lose the most common salutation because somebody deemed it offensive.
Thanks! (in keeping with the topic at hand.)
shh don't give ideas to bored twitter "activists"!
As well as being what you might say when clinking glasses, in the UK "cheers" is a jovial way of saying "thanks" as well as something you might say for "goodbye" so works in all these contexts simultaneously.
So cheers!
Cheers!
Candidly - your colleagues most likely don't appreciate it as you do, whether they know the meaning or not.
As I'm sure you're aware, in some countries, servitude is the greatest honor. But in many, it isn't; it signals 1) that you are lesser than or 2) you are very malleable person who may make a good fall person or dirty deed underling or 3) they don't believe your words and just think it's kind of creepy
I really appreciate that some countries consider it an honor, and I don't know where or who you work with, but there's a very good chance that your favorite valediction is not only underappreciated, but not appreciated at all.
Hope that's not the case but your closing comment sparked me to be candid about it for consideration.
[1] There are codified degrees of formality for written communications. Formal, demi-formal, and others used more operationally. I am talking about first-tier formal letters to senior officers in this case.
Dear Bobby,
Thank you for your email and response. I appreciate your prompt reply as always.
Following the meeting with Jane at 2:00 P.M. PST, it is of my professional opinion that we…
…
Let me know when you get a chance for your thoughts and again appreciate your time.
Thanks,
Me
—
Me, today:
Bob - Yes! Let’s rock and roll. Talk soon.
My runner up is "Yours," which I see didn't make the list.
I never had a sig - not for email, not for Usenet. At one time I just signed off with my name; nowadays I make do with a bare carriage-return. I figure people will be able to work out when they've got to the end.
Candidly, I think "Yours" is just weird. Maybe even kind of creepy? Just roll with cheers and forget about it!
Therefore I stick to “Best regards” mechanically. Note that I’m French, not native in English, so I’m not mastering colloquialities. Would it be appropriate to be more relaxed?
"Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus agréeables"
(Please be so good as to accept, Sir, the expression of my warmest feelings)
Well, that's what they told me at school - they were trying to teach me how to write business letters. It has always cracked me up.
/me not French.
I once wrote both an employee’s resignation and my acceptance for the conditions of it (on his request for both, he’s non-native), and it was awkward to try to find a valediction that doesn’t put him as inferior.
Language is a treasure.
You can have a fairly good command of a foreign language, but still fail at communicating. You also need to understand cultural conventions and customs, and for that there's no substitute for living there.
I've never written a formal letter in French. I don't know why they sent me to school at all, really.
/me went to a French school, in France, for two years. When I was 4. I know French nursery rhymes.
That would actually be somewhat familiar for a formal letter. You probably wouldn’t use "les plus agréable" here but rather "respectueux" or "les meilleurs". People just copy and paste them from the internet nowadays when they need to use one.
I didn't know that actual French people had to google to find the right terminology for a formal sign-off; that just adds to the hilarity.
Like it's either
"Dear Sir, I am writing to acknowledge that you RSVP'ed yes to our calendar invitation" or
"sorry about missing the meeting. we didn't end up making a power point, so we'll just send you a couple drawings our friend did of a different thing that's pretty close to what we were thinking of doing."
Me replying to my boss literally today: “lmao true”
I'm a "best" guy. It's never inappropriate. Whether I'm promoting you, firing you, reporting up on progress or problems, "best" always works.
(I'm not saying it's the best closer in all situations, but if you hate thinking about closers, it's the best generic choice. And the best boss I ever had always used it.)
Best,
Some guy on the internet
Superficially, they seem about the same.
Yours, &c., nuclearnice
In contrast, expressing best wishes always makes sense unless you hate the recipient's guts and want them to know it.
Thanks, civilized
(See? It makes no sense.)
Time is one of the most precious commodities we have - it seems appropriate to thank people for spending it on you.
Thanks, variaga
Yours truly, DG
Regards, The Lannisters
These things may be somewhat culturally determined (including office/corporate culture). To me, "best" reads as mindless as any other.
In fact, they all read as mindless to me, probably because in most cases they literally are mindless. You choose one and write it automatically in nearly every message.
That's not to say they're useless. Politeness in social interactions is filled with formulaic, almost ritualistics niceties. I just don't think there's all that much difference in meaning between these common formulaic responses.
Take care,
Another Internet Rando
My father agrees, and for a time his standard greeting to colleagues were these words:
"Friendly Noise"
I've tried it a few times. I get strange looks at first, but people adopt.
At first I found it incredibly rude how people would ask me a question and then keep walking while I stopped to start answering their question.
The point was that it's not at all obvious that it's not a question to someone not used to it being used as a greeting, given that it's worded as a question, and the intonation is given as a question, and given that many places in the world you wouldn't say the equivalent unless you're actually asking a question.
English feels to me to be pretty extreme relative to other languages with respect to the sheer number of terms that have been reduced to "friendly noises" and stripped of all meaning, to the point that it leads to the number of comments in this thread discussing the nuances of terms the sender most of the time has put no thought into.
I still tend to feel someone who throws out a "friendly noise" like this are usually being rude by using a question as a greeting, because whether you like it or not, it's implicitly acknowledging you don't really care, and so I avoid using it.
I know there are other languages as or more widely natively spoken (Spanish and Mandarin come to mind) but isn't it common for native speakers of those languages to also natively speak local languages and/or dialects. Could the number of "friendly noises" and idioms in English be because most english speakers only speak english?
In your specific case (ie coming to the UK) you've also the interesting thing where lots of americanisms have been adopted here, while still Britishisms remain. Different regions of Britain also strongly maintain a lot of their own "isms" (Scottish-isms for example) and we still tend to use them with other brits out of local pride. So depending where you are in the UK (London would be the extreme example) you'd likely hear Americanisms and Britishisms on a daily basis plus various region specific isms if you were often around people from those areas.
> Could the number of "friendly noises" and idioms in English be because most english speakers only speak english?
I don't know. My experience is that a lot of languages tends to have a much more formal hierarchy of terms to use for greetings, while English is all over the place. I think maybe part of the challenge is that English is used by people spread out much more and with very varying degree of experience with the language, including people using it as a second language, and so it's in some respect more internally diverse. It also lacks a strong effort to direct the language.
E.g. I'm Norwegian, and Norwegian has an official organ that gives government and the public advice on the evolution of the language, and language reforms have regularly passed as acts of parliament. French has Académie Française. For a lot of languages there are these official or semi-official organisations that sets out how the language will be taught at schools and what the official use should be like. It doesn't stop proliferation of variants (Norwegian authorities have more than once had to admit defeat and undo language reforms that failed to catch on, or just adjust the language to reflect use rather than vice versa), but it does tend to tame it somewhat.
When I first started learning French a quarter of a century ago, one of my classes was "mercantile French" which included lessons on French business correspondence, and one of the things that stuck with me was how much more formal it was (at least back then) in terms of greetings and signoffs and formatting than English correspondence. I'm taking a refresher course for my French these days, and the perceived more formalistic determination of level of formality is quite interesting.
> you've also the interesting thing where lots of americanisms have been adopted here
Yeah, in this case it may well be part of it.
That said even when it was a question it was expected that you replied something along the lines of "I'm good thanks, you?". Unless it was a good friend you never replied negatively, though if you had good news it was fine to expand.
> That said even when it was a question it was expected that you replied something along the lines of "I'm good thanks, you?". Unless it was a good friend you never replied negatively, though if you had good news it was fine to expand.
Yeah, that was my expectation as well - the answer needs to be adjusted to how close you are, and so it's mostly relatively perfunctory. But occasionally you get more detail than you bargained for.
Perhaps it was originally just superficial politeness as well, and so over time the process was abbreviated to match the empty intent.
Given my interactions, I'd be cautious dead-queueing an email on this criteria.
Regards,
Another guy on the internet
Seems like there's a lot of nuance here.
I wouldn't bat an eye if a letter from my bank or a formal HR communication signed off with "Regards". But if a colleague from another team or a senior leader ended an email with "Regards" I would find that rude.
That said I've spent the last two years working in the public sector and have come to learn that the standards for communication and presentation are very different here. I'd still consider it rude from a colleague who worked in my directorate (it's a tech directorate) but if it was from someone outside my directorate I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Though in those cases I also tend to be aggressively informal/casual in my responses.
“Best” is shorthand for wishing the other person well. Using it while firing someone could be seen (to use your words) as “mindless and weird”, a meaningless and reflexive dismissal which may rub the recipient the wrong way (“if you cared about what’s best for me, you wouldn’t have fired me”).
https://blog.boomerangapp.com/2017/01/how-to-end-an-email-em...
- got your fire drill and I'm handling it... Cheers (don't worry about it)
- won your business, thank you so much... Cheers (celebrate)
- scheduled a meeting for next week. looking forward to talking to you... Cheers
To say thanks after everything seems odd to me. Kind of means nothing in many contexts.
Cheers at least reinforces your tone and personality (assuming that's how you are) in really any context and how you conduct business.
I still use thanks of course to be thankful, but almost always close with Cheers.
I've long done away with email signatures. I have no signature at all. (Metadata is plenty to let people know my full name, and they can just Google me, or use Superhuman / Rapportive to get info on me in context.)
These days, most of my emails are signed with "-Kenneth" only. No signoff, no signature. The rest don't have a signature at all and just contain a one line response.
For greetings, a simple "Hi" or "Hey" with the recipient(s)' first name does the trick.
Receiving emails with giant email signatures drives me nuts. I don't care to have your logo, 10 contact infos and a giant email disclaimer wasting a full page length of my screen. The worst are the notes "please consider the environment before printing this email." These make me want to roll my eyes so hard.
That muscle memory would randomly kick in at inconvenient times when I started using it for professional correspondence. Nobody said anything, but I can imagine the cocked eyebrows of someone receiving an email from me with such an effusive sign off!
https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=0c60818e26ecdbe423a10ad2...
Love, Saruman
– "Can you send me the foo report?"
– "Sure here it is"
– "Thanks"
– "No worries"
If someone says 'thanks in advance', I presume it's to soften the lack of reply so I don't think it's rude. Also means I don't need to acknowledge their thanks email & we can move it from a 4 email conversation to a 2 email one.
Between colleagues that are already dealing with a lot of email I'm all in favour. (Assuming I already have a decent relationship with this person)
Not sure about other email clients, bit it is definitely possible in Thunderbird to set it up so the "Thanks/Regards/Best/whatever" is in the same font, style, etc. as the body and the rest of the sig is in a different font (that's my standard setup; compose it in TBird, save it out, extract, set as sig file, maybe tweak the HTML a bit).
"Presume good intent"
There are so many different cultures of written communication and due to the internet you're far more likely to come across someone who uses a different "written communication culture" than a spoken one. So if someone comes across as rude or inappropriate due to how they word things I try to actively ignore tone, reserve judgement and presume good intentions.
The highest rated sign-off "thanks in advance" implies that you're thanking them for their future action, which is most likely a response to a question in your email.
Whereas the lower rated sign-off's "kind regards" and "best regards" don't imply that you're expecting a response at all.
I use thanks a lot, especially if I'm trying to get something done. A little appreciation never hurt...
Let's just say she's not well liked.
That the "community" is against this (which is a contentious claim but certainly a vocal subset are against it) may be an indicator as to why I try not to spend any time on it any more.
I ended the mail with a "Cordialmente" ( ~ Cordially) as it was informal, and it translated this single word to "Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués", which is about the most formal formula possible.
Most I've seen are "Bien à vous" or "Bonne journée".
Actually... what are the most common endings in French emails? Thinking that a website that had all of those sorted out, categorised by language and degree of formality, would be really useful. Sometimes people just want the equivalent of "Cheers" in e.g. Spanish?
I guess when you end with that, it makes it clear that I'm waiting for the other person to reply to me.
We also write "please do the needful" and "please advise" a lot in our emails too :/
The phrase “do the needful” is never utter without an undertone of “you fucked up, please fix your fuckup immediately”. The funny part was that none of the Indian folks who used this phrase frequently would cop to it. Strong denials all around. But every example we could find in our email, that tone was certainly there.
Take from that what you will.
https://www.cc.com/episodes/yu0qm4/corporate-thanks-season-2...
>Matt’s broken “!” key strains his relationship with John and Kate, and Jake and Grace conspire to get rid of the office dog.
I stop reading as soon as I see the terms "SEO", "Dear" or "million", and drag it to the spam folder. I never see the sign-off.
One day I worry I'm going write an angry email to a group, then typo the sign off with "Retards," and send before I catch it...
Regards, Full Name
everything thereafter:
- Name
Seeing comments about "seeming insincere" seems crazy to me. You're keeping up appearances no matter what your signature is, the impression you leave is going to come from the actual content of what you're saying anyway. I'd rather show I don't care about the formalities to encourage whoever I'm emailing to do the same.
Hi normal,
Do this. Thanks.
Greetings,
projectmanager
This implies to me that the other Party has decided my course of action and my time alocation without any discussion about my availability and if the approach makes sense.
You on the other side are the manager of your time. So if you answer "can't do, I am overbooked" it's as much of an directive for the other side.
Edit: Given you work for more then one project.
So it is important to communicate and to discuss urgencys and eventual deadlines.
A similar structured reply would be.
Dear Projectlead,
I am unavailable to perform that task at the moment. Thanks.
Regards,
normal
And even if it is my DirectX superior, there is no need to involve thanks. Just write:
Hi normal,
I need you to do X until Y/immediatly.
Greetings, Projektmanager
When this is done you can thank me for performing the task, but otherwise it just feels like a structure telling me:
End of discussion!
I am able and willing to follow orders without this.
One thing that will definitely irritate me is when a PM tries to directly Minion me without a pre-amble discussion about the work first.
But yeah, thanks in advance can be a very passive aggressive thing.
A more flexible alternative would probably be "appreciate your expertise in setting this up for us"
"I really appreciate any help you can provide."
"I will be grateful if you can send me this information."
"Many thanks for considering my request."
"I hope what I have requested is possible."
"In the meantime, thank you so much for your attention and participation."
Often I don't use these word-for-word. The point is, I think, to formulate a closer that's at least a bit customized for the occasion. Then the whole thing will just seem more natural, friendly and human.
I wish you the best email closers, npteljes
[0] https://macademic.org/2011/06/08/never-end-your-email-with-t...
loo
Thanks.
In my experience, if you’re the kind of sociopath who lays down a thick trowel load of passive aggression with a Thanks in advance, you’re probably also good at manipulating me into responding to your request with the rest of your email body too.
Thanks in advance for your constructive comments,
g.o
your obedient servant,
-dsr-
(name)
XOXO