Best regards meaning: kind wishes, a notch up

Kind wishes for anyone

Best regards is regards with the dial turned up one notch. The “best” is a superlative doing light work: of all the good wishes on offer, you get the best ones. Dictionaries file it as a polite way to close a letter, with no formal or informal label, and in practice it suits both.

That range is why so many email signatures carry it. It goes on the first email to a client, the reply to a recruiter and the note to facilities about the broken blind. None of those readers finds it odd.

The near-synonyms fill a shelf: kind regards, kindest regards, best wishes, yours truly, yours sincerely, yours faithfully. Best regards sits in the middle of it, the easiest one to reach.

Best regards next to its neighbours

The sign-offs around it differ by a few degrees each, and the corporate jargon dictionary has entries for most of them.

• Regards alone is brisk, and in a tense thread it can sound chilly.
• Kind regards sits at about the same temperature, slightly stiffer.
• Warm regards is for someone you’ve met, thanked or worked with closely.
• Best wishes suits someone you already know quite well.
• All the best adds good luck, and often means goodbye for a while.

On a letter rather than an email, sincerely still outranks all of them. The military’s counterpart is V/R, written up the chain to someone senior. Best regards ranks nobody.

Choosing between best and kind

The two are close enough that most readers won’t notice which you picked. Kind regards leans formal, so it suits a complaint, a first email to a senior stranger, or anything likely to be forwarded to legal. Best regards leans friendly, so it suits a client you speak to every week. When in doubt, copy whatever the other person used last.

Ninth on the friendly list

British workers rank best regards ninth of ten friendliest ways to end an email, between “let’s catch up soon” and “see you soon”. Warm regards made sixth, so the warmer word won by three places.

Its stiffer twin, kind regards, missed the list altogether. The friendliest closing of all wished the reader a great day, and nearly half the people picked it.

The one-word version, Best

Many people clip it to Best, which saves eight keystrokes and some goodwill. Cheers is the other short option, chiefly in Commonwealth offices.

Best is more American than British among young workers. 21% of American Gen Z workers sign off with it, against 11% in the UK.

Signed by the signature block

Best regards is often typed by nobody. It sits in the signature, above the job title and the desk phone nobody answers, and it goes out on every email that leaves the account. That includes the cheerful ones, the meeting declines and the note that moves your project to “next quarter”.

The Friday downgrade

Watch one colleague’s closings across a long week. Monday’s emails end with best regards. By Wednesday it’s Best. On Friday afternoon it’s the initial J and no punctuation, and the meaning hasn’t changed: goodbye, kindly, until Monday.

Best regards on bad news

Because it’s the default, best regards gives nothing away. A rejection signed best regards is still a rejection, sent with the best of the regards. The budget cut, the cancelled offsite and the reorg announcement all arrive in the same wrapping as the lunch order.

The closing can’t soften bad news. One plain sentence above it can.

Best regards in a chat window

Chat apps print your name and photo beside every message, so a sign-off adds nothing there. Best regards under “ok, will do” in a team chat looks like a letterhead on a sticky note. Keep it for email, where the name at the bottom still has a job.

When an AI drafts the email and another AI summarises it for the reader, the best regards at the bottom travels from one machine to another. Nobody reads it, and nobody was wishing anybody anything.

Tom books the kick-off

Subject: Kick-off meeting, Tuesday 10 am

Hi Priya, thanks for the call this morning. I’ve booked the kick-off for Tuesday at 10 in the small meeting room and attached the agenda. Lunch is on us.

Best regards Speak Tuesday, Tom