Insincerely yours
Email sign-offs are 'wrong', says Bloomberg. Guff, says the Villain
To whom it may concern,
It appears it’s been too long since we all had an extra thing to worry about in the workplace.
So, the helpful people over at Bloomberg Business have brought to our attention the latest piece of trivial folly to divert our attention from the actual work we’re paid to do.
On this occasion we’re told that the language we’re commonly using to sign off our emails – you know, things like ‘Best’, ‘Yours’, ‘Regards’ – are in fact wrong.
It comes as a surprise to me that, apart from the obvious dash of profanity, there’s such a thing as a ‘wrong’ email sign-off. But it’s worse than that. According to ‘experts’, the ubiquity of these sign-offs is a reflection of how the language in our emails is becoming ‘vulgarised and lazy’.
What a load of hooey. These are emails we’re talking about – the shortform method of communication that is quick, informal, and most importantly of all, avoids us having to talk to the other people in the office.
The UK is supposedly in a ‘productivity crisis’. If we’re at the stage where workers are forced to agonise over every phrase in their emails, we’ll never be in a position to solve it.
And if I learned my employees were devoting more time putting together pompous prose for their emails than they were to doing their day jobs, I’d encourage them to put their penmanship skills to use in a letter to the Job Centre.
As far as I’m concerned, an email should get to the point quickly and clearly and be on its way after a quick spell check. And even if there’s such a thing as email etiquette, this Bloomberg nonsense is really stretching its boundaries.
Besides. An email sign-off can only be considered ‘vulgar and lazy’ if you haven’t experienced the sort of thing that puts this into perspective. Vulgar? Well, you clearly haven’t been on the receiving end of one of my post-lunch rants.
And lazy? How about somebody just ignoring your email altogether?
Seriously, if you’re at the point in your working life where you’re overly worried about the terminology you use to sign off your emails, you need to be given something more significant to occupy your mind. LIKE SOME MORE WORK.
(Up) Yours,
The Villain
(PS True story: a friend of the Villain – yes, I do have one or two – once emailed a very senior, very female business contact and began it with ‘I appreciate that you’re very busy’. However, since the ‘T’ and ‘Y’ are next to each other on the keyboard, and he’s got fat fingers, it came out as ‘I appreciate that you’re very busty’. On the scale of questionable email terminology, he’s got you all beat.)
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