This assumed, nay, foisted closeness overrides the natural order of relationships. Call me old-fashioned, but you should have to earn the right to call someone by the diminutive of their name. Whether teamed with a “Best” or a “Yours”, or just hanging out on their lonesome, these initials are increasingly prevalent in our inboxes. Turns out that fad had some staying power. Equal parts smug and cutesy, these were derided as the “latest email fad” five years ago. It’s only one of 100 messages I’ll send today.Īnd so we get to the initialled signoff. I don’t need to prove my trustworthiness to you. Nowadays, your average millennial is never more than 90 seconds away from a Whatsapp notification. Far too overblown, it’s a pious throwback to a time when written communication involved actual effort – aching, ink-stained hands and all that. I mean, office life is dull enough do we really have to bring insincere sincerity into it? “Yours faithfully” is even worse. I haven’t used it since.Īt least “Best” is better than “Yours” – short for “Yours sincerely” or “Yours faithfully”, those annoying twins that refuse to die. Apparently it was their holiday catchphrase. One had ATB on his bicep, the other on his wrist. I arrived back one evening to discover a couple of my fellow travellers had just got matching tattoos. “All the best” was ruined for me during a stay in a Miami hostel. “Best” is also a bastardised version of the slightly more jovial “All the best”, which in turn is an ellipsis of “I wish you all the best of luck.” Now that’s a bit much: “Can you make that meeting at three? I wish you all the best of luck in finding out.” Google Calendar isn’t that treacherous.
Another word for you are the best full version#
Apparently, I don’t have that extra second to spare for the full version – or maybe I just don’t want to be associated with the term “best wishes”. I guess it’s an abbreviation of “Best wishes”. I don’t know when it started and I don’t really know what it means. So we’re all just muddling along and hoping we’re doing it right.Īhrwa Mahdawi won’t approve but, when it comes to email signoffs, I’m a “Best” man. And our parents certainly can’t enlighten us. For most, email etiquette wasn’t taught in school. Anyway, the reason so many people ruminate on the language of email is because none of us are quite sure we’re doing it properly. I might even get stuck into attachments next. M y earlier salutations piece created a fair bit of chatter, so I thought it was high time for the sequel.