How to Sign Your Emails

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/02/AR2009080202073.html

by mhb • 17 years ago

7 14 17 years ago

washingtonpost.com

ErrantX• 17 years ago

I always always sign off using my first name now and nothing else. I've found this the best way :)

The only time I dont is on my work email when interacting with clients - when I use regards.

Titanous• 17 years ago

I do the same as well. Saves quite a bit of thinking.

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

In Norway, "mvh", an abbreviation for "med vennlig hilsen" (literally, "with friendly regards") is standard. I'm often asked how to translate that into business English, and I'm as stumped as everyone else. There doesn't seem to be an obvious choice.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

"Kind Regards" is pretty common in English English, find this often on business missives.

I often use "sincerely", but never "yours sincerely" - I'm sincere but I'm not the chattel of the recipient.

pmichaud• 17 years ago

I always say "Rock out with your cock out," but only in formal contexts.

pavel_lishin2• 17 years ago

I always preferred "Erotically yours," in a business setting.

ScottWhigham• 17 years ago

We need a Washington Post article for this?

rawr• 17 years ago

I was expecting this to be about digital signatures and was slightly disappointed when I found out it wasn't the case.

Silly me for assuming a technical issue would be addressed on Hacker News.

krav• 17 years ago

I'd like to sign my emails the way Presidential candidates sign off on TV commercials:

I'm [enter my name here] and I approve of this message.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

So this past year I was working some for LargeCorp and had the same question: how to sign off emails?

I really liked "V/R" or "VR" that the Navy uses, so I decided to go with that. But what about a tag line? A contact card? Some kind of indication of who I was and where I was working?

After some thought, I put together a V-Card with my contact information. Also, just to screw with people, I put a nice little latin quote at the end. I think the first one was "Sona si Latine loqueris"

Or translated, "Honk if you speak Latin"

Nobody spotted it.

Well since I got away with that, I couldn't let the experiment rest, so I changed my latin quote every month or so. I had "Age, catamite - fac mihi hunc diem felicissimum!" -- go ahead punk, make my day. I had "Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure" -- I can't hear you, I have a banana in my ear. One of my favorites was "Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!" -- may faulty logic undermine your entire philosophy! Which, unfortunately, was true for many of my correspondents.

Nobody ever bothered to look this stuff up. I imagine as long as you're not directly insulting to the reader, it's not that big of a deal. (But if you're a bit of a prankster, there's some fun to be had!)

pavel_lishin2• 17 years ago

Do you actually know Latin, or are you using a translation service?

One of my signatures for the longest time was "Eta erat cuando hic adveni", which I believe means "It was like that when I got here", but I'd really like to get someone to verify that. (Someone who aced some difficult exam - GRE? GMAT? - proudly said they knew Latin, and were pretty stumped.)

teilo• 17 years ago

What an obsessive waste of time and ink.

jongraehl• 17 years ago

I let my From: field do the signing.

jimfl• 17 years ago

Looking forward to seeing you on Web 3.0,

--Jim

How to Sign Your Emails

Related Stories