If you always sign a breezy ‘best’ at the end of your emails, you need to stop. Because, well, it’s the worst.
Although the sign-off has only gained popularity in recent years, it’s so ubiquitous these days that Judith Kallos, an email etiquette consultant, told Bloomberg it’s become bland. Dare we say it, a bit insipid.
‘Best is benign,’ she says. ‘It works when you apparently don’t know what else to use.’
Barbara Pachter, a business etiquette coach, explains that when email first hit offices in the 90s, people tended to omit greetings and sign-offs completely, wanting to free themselves from the shackles of formal letter writing. It was ‘like a memo,’ she says.
