“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Worst Signoff Ever Devised

“Best.” It means “Best wishes, but I can't be bothered to type six letters, so not really best wishes.” It is like ending your email with a splat of Vaseline or Marmite. Or a googly eyed face that turns out to be on a middle finger raised in insult.

As I learned at school and still practice, there is a sequence of signoffs. It goes:

Yours faithfully [which you keep if you are talking to Gandhi or other luminary who is truly cool]
Yours sincerely
With best wishes
Yours

“Best.” It's a sonic and social splat. No wonder we all hate one another.

2 comments:

Alicia said...

I always sign off "Best." Thank you for this, I see you are so right!

All the best to you, Alicia

Roger Whitson said...

Absolutely. I always hated best. I use "sincerely." One of my ex's always signed her emails "indubitably," which sounded a little pompous to me.