TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: English Writing Lesson: Formal and Informal Email Endings - How To Correctly & Politely End An Email

Hi, everyone, its Nicole again, and for today's learning video we're looking at email endings.

We've already looked at alternatives for starting the email, for saying dear. Now we're looking at ending the email, for how to say regards, I suppose, so how to sign off at the end of your email.

There are lots of different ways, both formal and informal, and I'd like to go through them with you and just give you a few ideas, because, you know, if you're writing 50 emails a day for work, it does get a little bit boring if you're always writing the same thing, and it's important sometimes to adjust your email according to who you're writing to, you know, you want the person to feel that you're not just cut and pasting something, that it's not just a template that you're following, but that you're writing an individual email to them. So, that goes through the whole email from the beginning all the way to the ending.

So, some examples, we could say ‘kind regards’ simple’ and then Nicole, or ‘regards Nicole’.

Now, look, if you're using regards, ok, as an English native speaker, regards has like a double meaning, regards is when you are sort of showing that you're not 100% happy about something, regards is showing maybe that you're keeping a bit of distance, a bit of formality, that maybe you might not be happy because they haven't given you the information you've wanted, etc. So, you know, be careful with regards, don't think that it's a really friendly beautiful version of saying goodbye, because it has that underlying meaning for a native speaker of I'm not a hundred percent happy, I'm being quite formal with you, so ‘kind regards’ is obviously better there.

You could also say ‘yours sincerely’ very formal writing there, or ‘yours faithfully’, both of them are really reserved for formal letters where you don't know the person, so keep that for maybe legal documents or, you know, just something formal where it has to stay professional.

You could skip the ending completely and just focus on thanking the person, so you might say ‘many thanks’ comma Nicole or ‘many thanks’ exclamation mark, and then write Nicole, your name, that's my name! You could say ‘with thanks’ or ‘thank you for everything’ or ‘thanks so much’. All of them are great ways to end your email.

You could say something like ‘all the best’ - this is when you're wishing someone something. So, somewhere in the email you have wished them good luck or happy birthday or whatever it might be, so at the end you could say ‘all the best’, similarly you could say ‘best wishes’ at the end if you've already wished them luck or something throughout the email, same with ‘congratulations again’ - somewhere in that email you've said congratulations, so at the end, instead of saying ‘kind regards’ you just say congratulations again with an exclamation mark and then write your name.

Same with ‘thanks again’, you know, you might have already said thank you, and now you're saying it again.

If it's really informal, you could even say something like ‘take care’ and put your name after it, or if you want to be a little bit personal, maybe you know the person really well, or they’re your boyfriend or girlfriend or partner, you could write ‘yours’ with a comma and then your name, or ‘love’, you know, love not just for a partner or a boyfriend or girlfriend, but love for anybody that is really close to you, you know, it could be a best friend, anybody, so, love or ‘love always’ even better. Really informal.

If you work together with someone and know them quite well, you might simply write ‘cheers’, you know, and that's only used if you know the person well enough to go and have a drink with them and actually say cheers in person.

‘Good luck’ - somewhere in that email you've already wished them luck, so you might there say as an ending ‘good luck’, Nicole, something like that.

‘Have a great day’ a lovely way to end your email instead of saying kind regards. You could say ‘have a great day’ exclamation mark and then Nicole.

‘Talk soon’ there's another great way to end it, or if it's informal and you're writing to someone you know well, you could simply write ‘your friend' comma Nicole like a birthday card or something.

So, there's quite a few examples of email endings, instead of always saying kind regards, regards, your sincerely, etc. I hope that you enjoy using them - make an effort this week, write down the list of words that I've just given you, perhaps, and yeah, try and use a different one in every email that you write. 

Anyway, I hope that that's been helpful. Have a wonderful day, and what should I say? Kind regards! Bye!