I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Old-blog-archives at 10:01 am on Friday, 21 April 2006
Working for a global company, I have the dilemma of what salutation to use in my emails.
I usually hover between
- Best regards: When I want to be really nice to people outside and who I haven’t deal with.
- Regards: If I want to be a professional and aloof. Sometimes frosty.
- Nothing: If I’m try to be cool, or if it’s someone I am playing ping pong with. (But to be honest I always feel a bit guilty with nothing).
- Cheers: If it’s internal, or someone external I speak with often.
Today I responded to a person in New York, (internal, first time contact) with Cheers.
This is what I got back:
I always wanted to end my emails with this..
“Cheers”
That was cool.
:)
So, if you want to be cool in New York …
blog
You started out by saying you weren’t sure what salutation to use, but what you actually discussed concerned closings, not salutations, which are the openings of letters or emails. For business emails, the best openings, in my opinion, are “Hello” and “Dear”, and, of course, for business informal situations, “Hi”. Otherwise, anything goes.
Ah yes, fair cop.
I don’t like “best” as an ending to a message either. I especially do not like phone calls that end in “late.” It seems everything has been shortened and no one knows how to communicate anymore, nor cares to. I miss the old days when women looked like women and men looked like men.