Bill Anstey from Middlesbrough wants to know the correct form for introducing and ending an e-mail.
We are still hacking out the correct form for e-mails. The virtue of them as a medium of communication is that they are fast and informal. It looks absurd to open “Dear Mr Higginbotham”, and close “Yours sincerely”. There is absolutely no obligation to reply to e-mails from strangers, except (possibly) for those of us who publish in the public prints, and so may (by implication) invite replies from all and sundry. The proliferation of e-mails is a contemporary plague.
PH
Advertisement
Dr Peter Borcherds, Birmingham: “Use your judgment when replying to e-mail from strangers: there is no obligation to reply to them, any more than to junk mail. It is most inadvisable to reply to those which are spam. If you reply, then the sender knows that you exist, and the persecution may continue.”
John Kinory, Steeple Aston: “The correct form of introducing and ending an e-mail is the same as for any other letter: you begin with ‘My fondest treasure’ or ‘Stinkers, you old rascal’, and you end it correspondingly. Never reply to e-mails purporting to be from a former Nigerian minister of finance.”
Advertisement
David Agress, Newport Beach, California: “There is no special form of address. The only etiquette which applies should be guided by one’s own sensibilities. Lovely person — lovely e-mails.”
Readers are invited to send their responses to this week’s question by June 25. A selection will be printed in a fortnight.
Is it courteous to apply “Esq” to the end of all men’s names when most men are not correctly entitled to use it?
Advertisement
Craig Cockburn, West Lothian