Sincerely yours

Most of us, like onstage performers, struggle for a graceful way to get offstage.

William Safire, On Language

William Safire

Sure email and texting are quicker and easier ways to communicate in writing, as opposed to good old-fashioned letters, but for me the big advantage is that, in most cases, they do not require a salutation or complimentary close.

Salutations in letters are less a problem, as long as you know the name of the person you are writing to and don’t have to resort to Dear Sir or Madam or To Whom It May Concern, but still the use of the word dear, even if proper and commonplace, often seems awkward and insincere. Do I really want to refer to someone I don’t know, or someone I know but don’t particularly like, as dear? In an e-mail you just start with the person’s name, if that.

The bigger problem with letters is how to close them because there are so many options. In his best-selling book On Language (1980), a collection of excerpts from his New York Times column, William Safire comments on many of those options.

Regards — “pedestrian”

With warm regards — “may be more than you want to say”

Warmly — “not cool”

Cordially — “has a slightly patronizing air”

Yours — “meaningless”

All the best — “insipid”

Personal regards — “a weak effort to add humanity to a business communication”

Your friend — “written only to people the friendly signer does not know”

Affectionately — “what it says is ‘I have this feeling for you that I am not prepared to call anything profound'”

That pretty much leaves us with the old standbys, Sincerely and Yours truly in business letters and Love in letters to those we actually love. Even then we may wrestle in our minds over which, if any, works best.

Safire writes that Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States at the time his book was published, routinely omitted the dear and the complimentary close at the end of handwritten White House memos. One can imagine all the time that must have saved. Carter, years before the invention of email, was a man ahead of his time.