an absolutely non-comprehensive guide to email sign-offs by Alan Z. '23, MEng '24

Until very recently,⁠01 read, they still haven't kicked me out of the group chat yet. I was the president of Next House, the dormitory where I live. The role of dorm president is often a job without a lot of clear constraints or boundaries, and it also varies with the structure of each individual dorm’s executive board⁠02 or, exec. and how people choose to divvy up the work from year to year. But, regardless of how vague the role is, or how any person chooses to occupy it, one thing is constant: email.

During my two years on Next Exec, I sent probably around 70 emails to our dorm’s official moderated mailing list, for everything from clarifying COVID policies to announcing large social events to publicizing important surveys on campus issues. It’s not always a fun job, although I would like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at it over time. Most importantly, however, to break the monotony of sending these emails, I changed my email sign-off for almost every email, meaning that I now have a compilation of all these important contributions to the art of email.

Without further ado, every email sign-off I have included in an email to Next House, ranked in tiers from most to least socially acceptable. Feel free to reuse them at your own risk.

Tier 0 (Normal Sign-offs)

• Thanks,
• Best,

These are my default email sign-offs, regardless of the context. I think you can’t go wrong with them; if you’re asking for something or have something to genuinely thank someone for, “thanks” is a good option. Otherwise, “best” is pretty good and generally unobjectionable.

Tier 1 (Slightly Longer Phrases)

• Thank you for reading,
• Hope to see you there,
• Good luck with finals and have a happy break!
• Excited to go apple-picking for the first time with y’all!

These are pretty normal phrases, and are generally within acceptable parameters for their given contexts. They’re not typical for “business email”, but people (probably) wouldn’t bat an eye at them.

• Sending love to all of you in these trying times,
• With love and care, / With love, / With care, / <3,

These are a little more out of the ordinary, but useful for the right circumstances; these were for some of the more serious emails I sent during my term, where things were particularly difficult—often as a result of changes in the COVID situation or during finals weeks.

Tier 2 (Local Slang / Unusual Words and Phrases)

• Toodles,
• Yeehaw,
• Feelsbox,

I’m a big fan of fun words, especially “yeehaw”, which was used aggressively by my predecessor and is now an integral part of my vocabulary. “Feelsbox” is a local word for an open-ended question placed at the end of forms to gather any feels the form submitter may have; this sign-off linked to a form that just contained a feelsbox.

• It’s almost the weekend!
• Have a delightfully delicious day,
• Going gentle into that good night,
• Happy voting,
• Oh boy,
• Almost done!
• Strongly agree,

These are just some phrases, some of which have some context—”strongly agree”, for example, comes from an email about surveys—but most of which are just…kind of there. These are probably less normal than the ones in Tier 1. Probably.

• da-ba-di-da-ba-doo,

I’m feeling kinda blue myself, if you know what I mean.

• yfn vp rel,
• yfn owner of 630 mailing lists,
• yfn vp-rel and owner of 573 mailing lists,
• yfn next election co-commissioner,

“yfn” means “your friendly neighborhood!”, and you can read more about mailing list culture at MIT here. Fun fact: when I first got to MIT, I only got “yfn” from people involved in Next Exec, like “yfn dining chair” or “yfn housing chair” and so, for a long time, I assumed the ‘y’ stood for “your”, the ‘n’ stood for Next, and the ‘f’ stood for—

Tier 3 (In-Jokes / Advertisements)

• Yee and Haw,
• yfn alan,
  alan

These sign-offs just build upon some of the items from Tier 2. “Yeehaw” becomes “Yee and Haw”, and “your friendly neighborhood <role>” becomes “your friendly neighborhood alan.” It’s me! I’m your friendly neighborhood Alan.

• Yepperoni!

This word was invented when someone⁠03 that someone might have been me, I don't remember. challenged me to come up with the worst possible way to say “yes”; some alternatives included: yep, yeppers, yoop, yeep, yeah, yeepers, etc.

• “Okay folks, tell us what to do with these stupid candles,”
• Maybe we’ll finally run out of tomatoes this year,

These are in-jokes which I would take too long for me to explain to you and also are not funny, so I will not explain further. Just imagine a mild sense of laughter in your chest, perform it, and move on.

• Noot noot,

Pingu says hi!

• Here’s the form link one more time,
• Have you considered hosting for CPW?
• please make it so it doesn’t look like a customink box exploded in my room, thanks,
• obligatory pub for the asymptones concert tomorrow at 5 pm in 10-250,

And, of course, the blatant advertisements! Sometimes you’ve just got to advertise for something unrelated in your otherwise coherent⁠04 dubious, discuss. email, but you don’t want to take up too much space. The email sign-off is a perfect spot for that!

Before we move to the most absurd tier of email sign-offs, I want to introduce one honorable mention.

Tier 3.5 (Honorable Mention)

This is not an email sign-off, but I was sending a lot of emails late August of last year. This was a stressful time for a number of reasons, and I was responding to an email on my phone at the end of a busy day…

i have never been so ashamed

Tier 4 (Absurd)

• Bottom text,
• Tomatoes and eggs,

Not too absurd…but still pretty absurd.

• yfn (yfn stands for yfn friendly neighborhood, just like PHP!),
• Yee’s Friendly Neighborhood Haw,
• Yeehawing my way downtown,

These are the logical conclusions to all the “yfn” and “yeehaw” sign-offs which have come before. I have also included the original link on the last sign-off: every year, my dorm has a contest to see who can avoid hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” for the longest amount of time after November, and so people often lay traps in links in their emails…like this one.

• Freude schöner götterfunken,
• die post kommt aus der Stadt,

From Beethoven’s 9th and Schubert’s Winterreise, both of which I’ve sung in various forms. I don’t actually know why I decided to include them in an email, but it’s too late to ask my past self now.

• Is boba a juice?,
• If I’m here, and you’re here, who’s driving the bus?
• How many emails could an Alan send, if an Alan could send emails?

Some important questions for our times.

Tier 5 (Meta)

These last two sign-offs express the contradictory parts of our selves, when sometimes we know we are out of ideas and yet we still continue to search for more. They are also both still true.

• I’ve run out of silly ideas for email sign-offs,
• Always looking for the next email sign-off,