I
can’t take it anymore. If I don’t discover or invent a good closing for my
emails soon, I’m going to use ‘love’, even when writing to my kids’ teachers or
the guy we deal with at the bank. “Dear Anthony,” I’ll say. “I wish to meet
with you to discuss renegotiating the terms of our mortgage. Are you free on
Monday at ten? Love, Jenn.”
Ever
since email became the ordinary way to communicate with people I have never
felt satisfied with the way I closed a semi-formal note. I haven’t found a word
or phrase that sounds quite right. And unless the email is to a friend or
family member, in which case I use ‘love’, a couple of x’s or no closing at
all, almost all my emails are semi-formal.
Truly
formal emails are easy. ‘Sincerely’ is an excellent, if old-fashioned, way to
sign off. You’ve also got ‘Regards’ at your disposal. It is somewhat lame but
feels less dated than ‘Sincerely’, and it’s used so much now that nobody
notices it. ‘Best regards’ is terrible and should never be used by any
person in any situation. (I speak on this matter with no authority whatsoever
but rely on my inner compass of common sense which is correct at least eighteen
percent of the time.)
I
once knew an Irish woman who closed notes with ‘All the best’. How I coveted
the phrase: perfectly in-between and all-purpose, and with as genial a meaning
as could be. But I could never pull it off and I knew it. That woman’s Dublin
accent gave her lexical impunity. She could say “perforated colon” and it would
sound like poetry. When she signed off with ‘All the best’ you felt she was
really wishing you well. If I signed an email with “All the best” the recipient
would think I was either senile or sarcastic.
Don’t
even think about signing off with “Cheers” unless you were raised in the
British Isles, Australia or New Zealand. These are the only suitable accents.
No, I’m sorry, there’s no negotiating on this one. While I commiserate with you
and wish I could get away with it myself, I can’t condone it.
Some
people say that signing off with “Yours” is a safe bet but I disagree. Do you
know what are you committing to, when you say that you are theirs? You’re
leaving it wide open to interpretation. You could be saying that you are their
toe hair, or personal chef. I say, don’t take those kind of chances.
Years
ago Theo received a letter from a friend’s mom which was signed, “Fondly,
Shirley”. We still treasure the memory.
Have
you noticed how everyone else seems to close their emails with absolute
confidence? You never suspect a first-time usage, or doubt beneath a
confidently typed “Looking forward to meeting you, Linda”. It’s that weird
authority that a typed word carries. We all know that any moron with a laptop
can put together a spell-checked email but somehow when it arrives in our inbox
it has a gloss of professionalism just because it’s the typed word. When we
see, “With best wishes, Stephen”, it looks polished and competent, even if we
know Stephen to be two brain cells away from fungus.
Maybe
the whole problem with closings is that we write emails today more or less the
same way we talk, but in the past letters were always more formal than
conversation. We’ve grounded on some kind of transitional sandbar. Other than
using “Dear --” to open an email (and more often than not it is “Hi --”), we
are casual. The body of the note is brief and informal. We no longer write Jane
Austen letters full of things like “My dear Sir, further to my letter of the 4th, I wish to ascertain the likelihood of your
attendance at Lord Gherkin-Bunwich’s on the morrow”. We say, “Hi Bill. Are we
still on for coffee tomorrow?” And when we tie up such a note, we instinctively
shy away from formal closings. Yet, for reasons I can’t imagine, it looks
strange to type ‘Bye’ or ‘See ya’ at the end of an email, the way we would at
the end of a quick phone call to that person.
I
don’t get it.
Love,
Jenn