Language Description and Documentation Commons^™

This paper attempts to address the lack of clear stylistic guidelines for non-native speakers of English writing e-mails by focusing on the particular problem of closings. To assist teachers who are asked to guide students on this issue, the paper examines the complimentary closings that 175 native speakers of American English used in 532 unique e-mails to the author. Patterns are viewed in relation to the sender’s gender, age, and social distance to the recipient, as well as other factors. No closing at all was used in more than half of the e-mails studied, but closings did appear to depend …