The hill I will die on: The email sign-off is archaic – it needs to go. No regards, Tom | Tom Gill

The torture of the inbox is made insufferably worse by the dated cliches at the beginning and end. Enough!

If email were a person, it would be an adult dressed in a teenager’s clothes, desperately trying to stay relevant. Despite being 55 years old and having been surpassed by numerous developments in communication technologies, its functionality remains largely the same as when it was first widely adopted. Unfortunately, so does the etiquette surrounding it.

Whereas other forms of communication have long since dispensed with unnecessary textual tassels, email communication styles still lean closer to telegram than a text. Since I last checked, almost no one relishes receiving a new email – unless it’s informing you of a significant cash windfall that means you can, in fact, now quit your job and stop using it altogether. Yet, for some reason, many people start their responses with “Thank you for your email!” I would put this forward as one of the least convincing sentences in the English language.

Tom Gill is a freelance journalist and consultant from London, based in Melbourne

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