It’s August, a time for slothful, sun-filled indolence with calming, restful thoughts. Or it would be, were it not for emails like the one that arrived the other day.
I did not know the sender, who was writing to confirm an upcoming appointment in a brief note that ended with an even briefer two letters: “KR”.
At first I thought this was a typo, but no. A day later, another email from the same sender ended the same way. Here was someone who felt the 12 keystrokes required to type out “Kind regards” were so arduous that it was better to use two.
It is not, especially in a business email to a stranger.
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Even with non-strangers, an overly familiar “KR”, along with its irksome cousins “BW” and “Rgds”, immediately undermines the polite effort to end with an inoffensive “Kind regards”, “Best regards” or “Best wishes”.
I realise there are more important things in life than the state of the email sign-off. But since we spend so much of our lives writing these things, it seems sensible to try to keep the most dire to a minimum.
The odds of success are low in a world where even university professors are impervious to the problem. “Bye for now”, one wrote to me not long ago. “Cheers”, said another, who was neither British nor Australian.
I forgive the man who wrote this, along with those who end with “Cordially”, a sign-off that sounds odd in some countries but not others.
No quarter can be given, however, for “Have a good one”, “Catch you later” and their ilk. All are a reminder of how much a sign-off can convey to the outside world.
American author Virginia Evans deploys a multitude of endings in her bestselling epistolary novel The Correspondent to sharpen her tale of the cantankerous Sybil, an inveterate letter writer in her 70s. One early Sybil letter to Joan Didion ends with a stilted “With very warm regards I write”. When the fictional Didion writes back with a sign-off of “With love”, Sybil immediately copies her.
Never does anyone choose the sign-off a disturbing number of my correspondents have lately adopted: “Warmly”. It feels churlish to get annoyed by this innocent attempt at pleasantry, and yet I do.
Happily, jarring email habits sometimes die away. I can’t remember the last time anyone responded to an email with the execrable single “K” for “OK”, or asked me to confirm I had received and read their note. Long may the absence continue.
But a large number, including my other half, continue to sign off with the tremendously divisive “Thanks”.
I can see why. It’s brief and it need not be offensive, except if one is writing to ask for something to be done. In this case, “Thanks” and, more contentiously, “Thanks in advance”, can sound like presumptuous, passive-aggressive badgering. They’re probably best avoided.
Saying this, I am surrounded by people who loathe sign-offs that I am fond of, such as “All the best”, “All best” and, when the mood takes me, “All very best”. I’m told this sounds insincere and affected, and I should stick with “Best wishes”, which I mostly do.
I have, however, found myself ending emails on Fridays with words I once found hopelessly naff: “Have a good weekend”, or even “Have a great weekend!”
In the same vein, I have stopped ending every text message with a full stop, all the better to signal I am happy to keep chatting and not end the conversation at once.
Had you told me a year or so ago I would do this, I would not have believed you. But there we are.
How much easier life was when there were rules about correspondence. Having been born in the letter-writing epoch, I still remember having it drummed in that one should end a letter with “Yours faithfully” when writing to someone you don’t know, and “Yours sincerely” when you do.
But why? Why does a stranger deserve a pledge of faithfulness while a known quantity is offered mere sincerity?
I am also old enough to remember some of the more eccentric sign-offs people once used. Thankfully, so are some of those who write to me.
“Keep on trucking”, one said the other day, ironically. “Be lucky!” wrote another.
Obviously these are to be only used among people one knows well, and even then sparingly. But sticking to the rules at all times would be dull, and there is quite enough tedium in working life already. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
