How to Write Email: Common Greetings and Closings - Learn English with Jennifer

Subject: New exercises.

comma...skip a space

question mark

period

Let me get that URL. Good.

Let me insert the link.

There's the URL.

Looks good. Skip a space.

Okay. Greeting, closing, signature.

Looks good. Send.

Be sure your greeting and closing show the same level of formality.

Often in email you'll want a friendly but polite tone.

Hello works just fine.

Hi is common, too,

but it's less formal.

You'll see variation with punctuation marks,

especially in personal email.

Commas, dashes, exclamation points...

To me an exclamation point can appear

to be less formal and friendlier,

but it's not really necessary.

Be careful with exclamation points,

and don't use too many in one message with:

Hi! Hey! Bye! Take care!

Look at all these possible greetings.

They're friendly yet polite.

Now let's look at friendly but polite closings.

"Best" is very common.

You're basically sending your best wishes.

"All the best" - you're wishing them all the best.

"Regards" also works just fine.

I promise I'll show more greetings and more closings

in future lessons, and I'll tell you

which ones are appropriate for very formal or informal email.

Let's look at one more model.

Here we have a message being sent out to a list of neighbors,

so it definitely needs to sound friendly.

And yet this is a community event.

The subject is "Earth Day neighborhood event."

So it's not exactly informal.

We need a friendly but polite tone.

The greeting and closing match in tone.

Let's read and you'll see how this friendly and polite tone

is used throughout the message.

This message has a signature.

Three to be exact.

But not all emails include the sender's name.

At the end of an email message, should you sign your name?

Most of the time - yes.

It's a good practice.

Here are three tips when you type your signature.

First, you can use your initial, but only do that in an informal message.

And be absolutely certain that your reader or readers know it's you.

Second, don't add a period after your name.

That's not a common or standard practice in English.

And last, don't forget that you can use your email settings

to include contact information as part of your signature.

That's especially helpful for business email.

That's all for now.

Thanks for watching and happy studies!