Oct 20, 2002

I've started so I'll finish...
is not a catch-phrase restricted to Shree Magnusson or Mr. Basu. We all have decisions to make while terminating..., any missive that is. Good old school letters and school English ma'ams had their stock "Thanking you, yours ____" formats. But even with the abundance of emails with their inherent contractions and informality demand what a local Business English teacher called the "complimentary close" (No, I was forced to attend these business english sessions, before you ask). For a while, I was under the impression it was actually the "complementary close", meaning you closed what you began. Perhaps I was writing code for matching parentheses that day.
Anyway, I write "Thanks" before my name in emails, no matter if the recipients are clients or peers or others. There are a lot of guys who write "Thanks and Regards" to which there a great deal of in-jokes attached. I'm not a "and Regards" kind of guy, preferring to reserve my emotions in this matter. But it got so automatic, that a friend complained when I wrote "Thanks" in an email when it was felt that I was getting too formal. So now I have to remember to drop the "Thanks" in those kinds of mails. But I'm unable to keep the "close" to only my name, it seems half-baked and what if the recipient felt the same? So I take to writing the Angrezi schoolboy slang "Ta", or the uncouth "Tx". For variation I try prefixing the "~" to my name and drop the "Thanks". I've always got into trouble with the afore mentioned Biz Eng Teacher, for what I consider some pedantic advice. One of them concerned rules of using "yours sincerely" and "yours faithfully" which I have successfully forgotten. That's one good thing about emails, anything beyond the "Thanks and Regards" is a stuffed shirt in a three-piece suit.

On a related note, I would like to place on record the most interesting closures I have observed in the last few months from George (yes, this is his blog: free plug):
He started off by closing his emails to me with "Cheers". This soon morphed into "Chairs", followed by "Tables" and even "Sofas" a couple of days ago. There was also a "Charas" in between. No more samples required to understand his convoluted (and may I say funny, before I get struck off his address book) sense of humour.

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