AIBU to ask what email sign offs you use

[spaghettimaretti]

Just that really.

I think regards sounds grumpy.

Best wishes slightly flimsy.

Yours sincerely is more for hard copy letters.

Saw yours truly the other day but that sounds odd and somehow ancient.

I’m in a senior professional role in quite a conventional field. Currently use kind regards but feel like an update.

What are people using just now?

@MereDintofPandiculation

I’ve never used “yours faithfully”. “Yours sincerely” - it’s daft but I kind of feel it’s just such a formula that it’s lost any meaning.

But expressing kindness in a formal work email really does grate. I know it’s silly it just sounds so insincere.

Kind Regards. Always have done.

'Slay the day!'

Just kidding, I mainly use kind regards or thanks/many thanks depending on who it is to.

I don’t understand why you would want to use an archaic phrase like Kind Regards that you would never speak in real life in an email.

Thanks.

Written and spoken communication aren't the same. I also wouldn't say Dear Mr Smith, but it's a more appropriate thing to type in an email to a client than Hello.

I usually go for thanks/many thanks depending on context. Sometimes cheers if it's someone I know well. Have a strong dislike for 'kind regards' for some reason.

This has reminded me of the first ever email I was asked to send in a professional context (trainee solicitor from a very WC background, writing to a senior partner at the firm I was training with) - I started with 'Dear Mr X' and ended with 'yours sincerely' with painstakingly formal language throughout - the associate who'd asked me to send it had a very nice chat about not needing to be quite so formal in future 😅

A couple of weeks later I went to the firm summer party and witnessed 'Mr X' drunkenly whizzing down a helter skelter in his tux and realised that even the most senior of people are still just people haha!

Depends.
kind regards if I don’t know the person
Many thanks to colleagues
Cheers if I know the person very well (don’t really use this in my current job but did in my last role)?
sometimes ‘all the best’

Thanks is on my email footer, I change it to regards when I'm pissed off.
I also use the shorter/colloquial version of my job title unless I need to throw some weight behind something then amend it to my full title. Ridiculous but gets responses far quicker

Many thanks (99% of the time)

Kind regards is so formal and old school IMO

Many thanks for most.

Kind Regards in situations where I'm consciously trying to distance myself. Like when a random person from distant department gets hold of my name somehow and then essentially asks me to do xyz for them that they have no business asking.

Or 'Regards' if they've really pissed me off.

It would also be seen as quite odd to start an email with Dear Mr Soandso in my industry,

Hi Jane,
Blah blah blah blah blah.

Thanks
UndercoverCop

Even if more formal
Hi Johnathan,
Unfortunately as national policy/legislation dictates we will require XYZ before this situation can be progressed. Please let Jemima know as soon as those matters are resolved and we will be happy to ABC, within timescales laid out in the policy framework.

Regards
UndercoverCop
Big fancy sounding Job title.

I’ve stuck with Best Regards for years

Best Regards is my go-to…

Kind regards - when all is great
Thanks - if it's ok
Regards- I'm annoyed
Name only - you've really pissed me off

No idea if everyone I email knows this but oh well.

Kind regards is just a formula. It doesn't mean you feel particularly kind towards them, or that you have any regard for them, it just means you are not currently wanting to pick a fight.

My auto signature is Kind Regards which is pretty much standard in my workplace. Occasionally see Very Kind Regards if you want something. Sometimes if I'm emailing a well known colleague I'll add a funny sign off before my signature bloc like Cheers Big Ears X (all very chatty and informal)

Good Morning/afternoon is standard opening.

Yours Aye is used a lot by our Scottish contingent and in our scottish locations.

The trend just now is on replies or with familar people...

GM / GA

KR / VKR / YA

Me.

🙄

Precisely because it is an archaic phrase with no meaning. You use it when you're talking to someone you don't know well, or at all, you use it because it's anodyne, it's not giving any other message. It's got as much meaning as the real life phrases such as "How are you?" "Did you have a good journey" which are used to indicate you're curently not opposed to the other person and don't want to pick a fight with them. Not because you have the slightest interest in their state of health or whether they've been stuck in a jam on the M1 for the last 3 hours.

"Best" as a sign-off irritates me. Even though I usually mirror the other person, I can't bring myself to sign off with "best".

@MereDintofPandiculation

Kind regards is just a formula. It doesn't mean you feel particularly kind towards them, or that you have any regard for them, it just means you are not currently wanting to pick a fight.

I understand that... but it still sounds unbearably fake to me in a way that "yours sincerely" somehow doesn't. I can't really explain it other than to say that I think "kindness" doesn't belong in the professional realm.

There is a quite useful sign off here in Scotland- “Yours aye”, meaning ever yours. One of my surgeons used it regularly on emails to our colleagues.
However, being autistic and to the point, I kept professional email text to the minimum required for comprehension, and didn’t waste space on sign offs. I just wrote Babdoc underneath, with no mention of regards or wishes.

These sign-offs are a tricky kind of idiom though in general. They need to walk a difficult line between formality and friendliness that doesn't either sound hideously stuffy and pompous or fake matey.

I think a lot of them haven't really evolved much since the days of peak letter writing, which is very odd. In most areas of digital communication informality is totally natural but because email is professional it doesn't really allow for that informality.

Maybe we need an entire new language for email sign-offs. There isn't a single one I can think of which I think doesn't either sound stuffed shirt-ish or very fake.

My work is usually informal, I use Many thanks or Best wishes, or probably just name to close colleagues unless asking for a favour.

Kind regards I associate with impersonal emails received like ‘please note this invoice is due on x date’. Quite formal and with a slight air of those signs which start ‘Polite Notice’.

I use Hello, Hi and Thanks in emails to clients all the time.

Writing more like we talk has been standard practice in business English for most of this century.

I am 54 years old. Kind regards sounds like the sort of thing my Grandmother would type in an email if she had ever written an email and wasn’t dead.

Yes, everyone knows this.

But both How are you? and Did you have a good journey? are perfectly reasonable things to say to someone in the 21st century. Kind regards is what a Jane Austen heroine gives to a dowager duchess she’s having tea with.

Xoxo