When I was a young lad and was taught how to write a letter (a skill that has turned out to be not especially useful) I was told to end the letter with “yours sincerely”, which kind of baffled me at the time and still does. What does it mean, why would I want to be owned by the reader of the letter? why would I not be sincere?
And now, when my most of communication is via email, I’m receiving more and more of them ending with “regards” or “kind regards”. And now I’m asking myself the same question - what does that mean? It’s even happening with people I’ve known for years who have never put any strange incantations at the end of their emails in the past and have now started this odd practice. I guess emails are the new letters and we have to have some way of signing off from them. I’d always thought of emails as a fairly informal medium, but perhaps not anymore.
Regards Doogal
2 comments:
I tend to stick with Cheers. I guess its kind of American, but I can't really be dealing with 'Regards' since for me it conjures up images of olden day conversation between frilly cuffed, curly haired edwardian gents.
Yeh, "cheers" seems fine to me, not too formal. And I associate it with chinking glasses, so it doesn't seem American to me.
Cheers...
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