spmug 590 The perfect e-mail signoff: Is `Best' the best you can do?

By Lola Ogunnaike New York Times December 20 2006

Chad Troutwine an entrepreneur in Malibu, Calif., was negotiating a
commercial lease earlier this year for a building he owns in the
Midwest. Though talks began well, they soon grew rocky. The telltale
sign that things had truly devolved? The sign-offs on the e-mail
exchanges with his prospective tenant.

"As negotiations started to break down, the sign-offs started to get
decidedly shorter and cooler," Troutwine recalled. "In the beginning it
was like, `I look forward to speaking with you soon' and `Warmest
regards,' and by the end it was just `Best.'" The deal was eventually
completed, but Troutwine still felt as if he had been snubbed.

What's in an e-mail sign-off? A lot, apparently. Those final few words
above your name are where relationships and hierarchies are established,
and where what is written in the body of the message can be clarified or
undermined. In the days before electronic communication, the formalities
of a letter, either business or personal, were taught to every
third-grader; sign-offs -- from "Sincerely" to "Yours truly" to "Love"
-- came to mind without much effort.

But e-mail is a casual medium, and its conventions are scarcely a decade
old. They are still evolving, often awkwardly. It is common for business
messages to appear entirely in lower case, and many rapid-fire
correspondences evolve from formal to intimate in a few back-and-forths.

Although salutations that begin messages can be tricky -- there is a
world of difference, it seems, between a "Hi," a "Hello" and a "Dear" --
the sign-off is the place where many writers attempt to express
themselves, even when expressing personality, as in business
correspondence, is not always welcome.

In other words, it is a landmine. Etiquette and communications experts
agree that it is becoming increasingly difficult to say goodbye.

"So many people are not clear communicators," said Judith Kallos,
creator of NetManners.com, a site dedicated to online etiquette, and
author of Because Netiquette Matters. To be clear about what an e-mail
message is trying to say, and about what is implied as well as what is
stated, "the reader is left looking at everything from the greeting to
the closing for clues," she said.

Troutwine is not alone in thinking that an e-mail sender who writes
"Best," then a name, is offering something close to a brush-off. He said
he chooses his own business sign-offs in a descending order of
cordiality, from "Warmest regards" to "All the best" to a curt
"Sincerely."

When Kim Bondy, a former CNN executive, e-mailed a suitor after a dinner
date, she used one of her preferred closings: "Chat soon." It was her
way of saying, "The date went well, let's do it again," she said.

She may have been the only one who thought that. The return message
closed with the dreaded "Best." It left her feeling as though she had
misread the evening. "I felt like, `Oh, that's kind of formal. I don't
think he liked me,'" she said, laughing. "A chill came with the `Best.'"
They have not gone out since.

"Best" has its fans, especially in the workplace, where it can be a step
up in warmth from messages that end with no sign-off at all, just the
sender coolly appending their name.