Monday, February 7, 2005

Even without formal training, without accredited classes costing upwards of $200 an hour, we know the intricacies of e-mail closings. It’s intuitive, almost instinctual, and at the rate we’re going future generations of children will leave the womb with USB 2.0 enabled. Mommy will wave over her offspring in Cancun and say, “Junior, why don’t you lift up your sleeve so I can upload the family photos?” And then she’ll slap her forehead and declare, “Ha, gotcha! We don’t use digital cameras anymore. I can take 24-bit photos with my eyes. Yup, all in my skull.”

Technically savvy as we are, gentle reader, I thought it’d be worthwhile to document some of the more common phrases we use to end our messages. I don’t know, maybe we could reach scholarly consensus or something. Shit, I mean we’re published for crying out loud, assuming I remember to hit the “Publish” button.

So, e-mail closings. We’ll explore them in depth tomorrow, but here’s an idea of where we’re headed. For personal e-mails, you can finish your missives any way you please. You could conceivably end your entire message in a comma, making the whole thing a really long signature. Ah, but what about professional e-mails? Those are the ones that require our attention. They are marked by Franciscan solemnity, a seriousness encouraged by potential litigation, and this gravity seeps into the signatures. “Thanks,” “Sincerely,” “Best regards,” What happened to “KIT4EVAHKTHX” or “XOXOXO”?

Many times you’ll see a huge postscript in the form of a legal disclaimer, a confusing paragraph with words such as “forward-looking statements” and more conditionals than you can count, which may be fewer than three. In the spirit of lawsuits, I give you my own disclaimer. The closings we’ll discuss may work to your benefit or detriment. You might secure a promotion, or you may enrage the recipient and wake up dead in a ditch the following morning. You might even earn a piece of chocolate you needn’t share with others. That’s right, you’d have the whole thing to yourself.

Happy Monday,

B.