Regards meaning: good wishes, kept short

Good wishes, minus the wishing

Regards means good wishes. You send your regards to a friend’s mother through the friend, and the friend passes them on. At the end of an email the word does the same job in fewer steps: the writer wishes you well, then stops.

It has closed letters since at least 1775, so it had a long career on paper before anyone typed it. Email kept it because it fits on one line and offends nobody. One dictionary even records an abbreviation, regds., for anyone who finds seven letters too many.

The regards family, from cool to warm

Every version wishes you well. They differ in how much warmth they admit to.

Best regards is where most people settle, and warm regards is for someone who would recognise you in the lift. Outside the family, sincerely belongs on letters and cheers on email to people you’d make a coffee for. Each has its own entry in corporate jargon, along with the kind of email it suits.

The thread sets the temperature

Regards has no tone of its own, so it borrows one from the email above it. Under a friendly note about lunch it reads as a polite wave. Under three paragraphs about a missed deadline it reads like a door closing quietly.

Readers notice the change more than the word. A colleague who signed off with cheers all spring and switches to regards after the budget meeting has sent a second message. Everyone in the thread received it.

Regards with a full stop

Punctuation does the rest. “Regards,” with a comma leads into a name, the way letters were taught. “Regards.” with a full stop is a verdict. Drop the name as well and the email appears to have been signed by the building.

Regards down a reply-all

On a long reply-all, the sign-offs tell the story before the text does. The first email says best regards and the second says thanks. By the sixth reply, people are down to regards, and the person who answers with no sign-off at all has decided the thread is over.

Kind regards and the lists

In a vote of British office workers, best regards and warm regards both made the top ten friendliest sign-offs. Kind regards and plain regards did not, and neither turned up among the ten most annoying. Polite, forgettable, unranked: the regards brand.

A ranking of the worst email phrases put warm or kind regards tenth, as the closing that makes an angry email sound angrier. It had no complaint about plain regards, which has no warmth to fake.

Where it does the job

• A first email to someone outside the company.
• Anything with an invoice number, a contract or a delivery date in it.
• A reply to a cold sales pitch, where warmth would only encourage them.
• The fourth email in a thread about the same parking space.

Regards across borders

Regards travels well. German has Grüße, Dutch groeten and Polish pozdrowienia, each a word for the greetings you pass on, and German letters close with “Mit freundlichen Grüßen”. A team spread over five countries can agree on regards when it agrees on nothing else, including the meeting time.

When to add a line first

Regards can’t carry bad news on its own. If the email says no, put one human sentence above it: “Sorry this isn’t the answer you hoped for” does more than any closing. For the sentences above that, how to professionally say has the wording. The funny email sign-offs cover the days when even regards feels like too much effort.

A one-word reply has the same problem as a one-word goodbye. Noted and regards together, with nothing between them, is a complete and very chilly email.

A reply signed regards

Subject: RE: Q3 report, revised dates

Hi Mark, thanks for the update. The report was due on the 12th and the client has asked twice. Please send what you have by noon tomorrow and I’ll cover the rest.

Regards That will be all, Anna