Yours Sincerely. Kind regards. Warmly. Best.
The etiquette around signing off once seemed straightforward.
It was taught in childhood, along with how to hold your pencil and lay out a letter.
It was simply a farewell at the end of a note or message.
But sign-offs are not what they once were.
There is implied meaning and tone of voice, and in this era of electronic communication, a high risk of offending the recipient.
‘Kind regards’ is considered old-fashioned now, with Jane Austen-esque undertones.
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No one under 40 uses it, apparently.
What was once polite is now considered stiff and cold. Go figure.
‘Thanks!’ is considered passive-aggressive, particularly if the preceding paragraphs have included ‘as you will be aware’.
‘Cheers!’ is considered dismissive and unnecessarily light.
‘Thoughts?’ just indicates the sender doesn’t have any.
The prevalence of ‘Best’ puzzles me, given it is short for ‘All the best’ – as if the person can’t be bothered or is trying to sound cool.
Same with ‘Warmest’.
Sure, goodbyes can be hard, in life and in writing.
I once worked with a man who believed saying ‘goodbye’ to end a phone call was a waste of a word.
He simply had the required exchange and hung up.
At the other end of the spectrum is my elderly mother, who ends every phone call to everyone she knows with ‘I love you’ because she wants to remind them.
But email sign-offs are another beast entirely, given there is no body language to read, vocal tone to interpret, and they come at the end of a dump of info.
It seems that in this era, the most acceptable way to end an email that is friendly and means no offence is to add a little dash and your initial.
It might be a bit blank, a smidgen robotic, but it leaves little room to confuse, upset or offend.
So let’s see how many people I can affront or annoy this week, as I use the following sign-off: ‘Sincerely wishing warm and kind regards’.
Better still, I might change my signature block to include ‘May the odds be ever in your favour’, ‘May the force be with you’ or ‘While I breathe I hope’.
Dr Jane Stephens is a UniSC journalism lecturer, media commentator and writer.
