'Best' for Last?

[eojorav at gmail.com]

More generally there is this, from "Truth and Method".....

"The time lapse between sending a letter and receiving an answer is not just an external factor, but gives to this form of communication its proper nature as a particular form of writing. So we note that the speeding-up of the post has not led to a heightening of this form of communication but, on the contrary, to a decline in the art of letter-writing."

I've for a long time missed the handwritten letter and while I'm no luddite I can't help but feel that email, IM, and now Twitter have just brutalized written communication to all hell. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>

Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 14:13:28 
To: pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: 'Best' for Last?


'Best' for Last?
Or Should You Sign That E-Mail With Sincerely? Regards? Cheers? or L-, L-, Love?

By Ruth McCann
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 2009


It feels like the 18th century all over again. All that daily
correspondence, all those long hours spent hunched over a desk,
composing some thoughtful missive about one's dowry or the Jacobite
rebellions. Signed, "Yr humble servant."

Same deal now, basically, except (obviously) we're not clutching
quills; we're writing a passel of e-mails and clicking send on ye olde
BlackBerry until our fingers bleed. And something else isn't quite the
same: Unlike the heroes and heroines of epistolary novels, we aren't
blessed with time-tested formal guidance on the correct way to sign
off.

"Best"?

"Cheers"?

"Sincerely"?

For Daniel Morrison, CEO of the D.C.-based international relief
nonprofit 1Well, the wrong sign-off posed an impediment to deeper
romance. "I sent an e-mail to a girlfriend, and she was very put off
by me signing off with 'Regards,' saying that I sounded very
'emotionally detached,' " Morrison says via e-mail. "We did break up
shortly thereafter, so maybe she was right."

Will Schwalbe, co-author with David Shipley of "Send: Why People Email
So Badly and How to Do It Better," warns, "You can really do a lot of
damage, even with a careless closing. And one of the terrifying things
about e-mail is: You may never know."

But you may well feel the chill.

"If you have been writing to someone 'Best' this and 'Best' that, and
you get an e-mail that is a little colder, a little hostile, and they
sign 'Sincerely,' that does mean things aren't so good," Schwalbe
says. " 'Sincerely' is the one that says, 'There's a problem here.' "

And, one may well wonder, does "Cordially" ever mean anything other
than "My hostility is only thinly veiled"?

And when, e-mail-wise, is it too early for "Love"? Does "Fondly" ever
belong in business? Is "Cheers" too mock-Brit? Too alcoholic?

Will something that seems totally clever turn out to be totally
obnoxious? Such as: "Off like a prom dress"?

So many questions, so few answers.

Craig Brownstein, vice president of media relations at the PR firm
Edelman, is a devotee of "Best" and its variants. He says he started
seeing "Best" in e-mails a few years ago and has since picked it up.
But that professional close can quickly escalate into greater
e-intimacies.

"Likely, if it's someone I know, they get a whole mess of 'Kisses' and
'Hugs,' " Brownstein sighs. "I'm the sweet flack on K Street."

Brownstein asked his research team, StrategyOne, to catalogue the most
common e-mail closing lines with an online poll. (The sample of about
a thousand Internet users came from a nonrandom pool of respondents,
so these numbers are rather more food for thought than hard data.)

Although "Best" seems ubiquitous in certain e-mail circles
(Brownstein's and Schwalbe's, for instance), for some reason it was
barely a blip on this survey's radar.

Twenty-five percent of participants said they close their professional
e-mails with "Sincerely," while 20 percent use some variant of "Thank
you," and 17 percent use no closing at all. "Love" is the most common
personal e-mail closing, followed by no closing.

This all might come as no great surprise to Peter Post, author of
"Essential Manners for Men," and one of manner maven Emily Post's
great-grandchildren. Post swears by "Sincerely," which he describes as
an all-purpose, "safe" e-mail close -- the little black dress of
sign-offs, if you will. "Yours truly" and "Regards" can also work,
Post says, but "Best" is more dangerous territory.

"I think it's more important with 'Best' that you know the person,"
Post says. "I think it would be very awkward to do that to a person
that you only knew very slightly or hadn't yet met."

But in their book, Schwalbe and Shipley recommend "Best" and "Best
wishes" as "among the most common in e-mail -- safe, all-purpose ways
of bringing a note to an end." Schwalbe himself often ratchets "Best"
up to "Best!" -- with the exclamation point added to warm up a medium
in which everything can unfortunately sound a wee bit frigid and
humorless.

Huffington Post editor in chief Arianna Huffington, likewise, says
that one can do better than "Sincerely."

[...]

Until e-mail etiquette starts being taught in elementary school (is
it?), perhaps we've little choice left but to hit send first and ask
forgiveness later. Cheers & Ciao, Yr Obdt Srvt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/02/AR2009080202073_pf.html

"the PR firm Edelman"

Edelman, Steve
[German: "Edelmann" = "nobleman"]; Tales of the Schwarzkommando,
Collected by, 315; "Kabbalist spokesman" 753; "a Hollywood business
man. . .accused of Attempted Mopery" 755

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/e.html