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Grab The RSS“Yours faithfully” or “Yours sincerely”?
In 1928 H. W. Fowler listed these phrases and their uses:
Yours faithfully (to unknown person on business)
Yours truly (to slight acquaintance)
Yours very truly (ceremonious but cordial)
Yours sincerely (in invitations and friendly but not intimate letters)
With slight variations between British and American usage, these forms are still in use.
If you don’t know the name of the recipient…
Yours faithfully is British usage. It is used when the recipient is not addressed by name, as in a letter with a “Dear Sir” salutation. I have never seen it in correspondence between Americans. That’s not to say it won’t catch on. I’ve come across letter-writing guides on the web that imply that it is standard American usage.
Yours truly is the American equivalent of “yours faithfully” that I was taught by my American business teachers. When I begin a letter “Dear Sir,” I close it with “Yours truly.”
When you do know the name of the recipient…
Yours sincerely is also British. Americans tend to reverse the order and write Sincerely yours.
When I worked in England, I was told that to write Sincerely without the Yours was very bad form. Now, of course, Sincerely is a common and acceptable close for American business letters.
Which words to capitalize…
Only the first word is capitalized:
Yours faithfully,
Yours sincerely,
Sincerely yours,
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41 Responses to ““Yours faithfully” or “Yours sincerely”?”
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I use Best–is there anything wrong with that style?
Speaking about closing letters, I *hate* the closure:
“Warmly, dot dot dot”
It always makes me think, well Jeepers, how else will they say it?
“Frigidly, dot dot dot”
“I’m really stressed by you but I’ll lie about it and say Warmly, dot dot dot”
etc.etc.etc.
That being said, I do use “Sincerely” when being formal, and “Best wishes” every other time.
I use “Sincerely” to conclude almost all correspondence. Once in awhile I might say “Most sincerely,” but never “Yours [whatever]” for the simple reason that I am not “yours.” You could attribute that to the streak of American egalitarianism in me, or possibly my being a lawyer who sometimes writes to adversaries, but I am my wife’s, or my children’s, but never “yours.”
I’m a 40 year old American, and I was taught:
For business or formal letters-
“Sincerely,” or “Yours truly,”
For personal letters-
“Love,” or “Warm regards,” or “Sincerely yours”
Barbara, you made me laugh!
I use “Best wishes,” but oh, how I long to write, “I remain, your most faithful and humble servant.” (sigh)
Hi. I’m new to your site, but I love it already!
I’ve always thought that “Yours truly”, “Sincerely yours” etc. sound extremely frivolous, forced, and, frankly, ridiculous!
Why? Well, because “I’m yours” is something that we say only to people we’re MADLY IN LOVE WITH in real life!
But alas, the usage in English is overwhelmingly accepted. Who am I to say it sounds too mushy and cutesy for my taste?
Sincerely yours (please refer to my first sentence
), Cesar!
Dee, you caught me in a mental lapse, which may show how infrequently I write actual letters to my family. “Love” is the perfect closing for correspondence to my wife and children. I use “love” all the time in closing [shudder] e-mails to them and a few close cousins.
What would Fowler have made of “Yours very truly and sincerely”?
To me, this shows the arbitrary creation of some “rules” for writing, especially those that seem to have neither grammatical considerations nor agreement between the meaning of the words and the purpose for which they are used.
“I don’t know you. We’ve never met. This is an unsolicited letter trying to get your business. You will probably throw it in the trash. I don’t expect to hear back from you. In spite of this, truly, I am yours.”
I said this in another response somewhere, but the idea of telling someone I am his or hers, when I have never met that person, feels awkward to me.
My pick is still for “Sincerely.” I wouldn’t recommend that a client change the closing line he or she has selected, but I will continue to use “Sincerely” for my own professional correspondences.
I use “Best regards” for email letters and “Sincerely” for cold call business-type letters. I’m with Al G. on letters to family and friends, you show your emotions, “Love” or “Love ya mucho.”
I use “Dear Jane” to someone I know and end with “Yours sincerely”, whether she is dear to me or not, to indicate that she may rely on the emotions I express.
I use “Dear Sir” to someone i do not know and end with “Yours faithfully”, where my faithfulness is to indicate that my words may be relied upon.
With emails, I end with “Regards”, as i want something that i can use every time to anyone as a mark of consistency and to avoid giving offence by reverting to “regards” having used used “warm regards” or similar on a proor occasion.
I use “Dear Jane” to someone I know and end with “Yours sincerely”, whether she is dear to me or not, to indicate that she may rely on the emotions I express.
I use “Dear Sir” to someone I do not know and end with “Yours faithfully”, where my faithfulness is to indicate that my words may be relied upon.
With emails, I end with “Regards”, as I want something that I can use every time to anyone as a mark of consistency and to avoid giving offence by reverting to “regards” having used used “warm regards” or similar on a prior occasion.
what about “I’m your most sincerely” ?
i appreciate the good work done to set the standard in the english language. most a times we interchange the american version with the british version. i strongly believe u have given more insight on the use of the english language.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
9 plus 18 is always 20. hoop u learned something of it.
I had a truly frightening experience yesterday. I sent a business letter to a new client whom I have never met and likely never will. We also had never corresponded previously. I signed this letter, ‘Yours faithfully’. He complained to two of my bosses that it was religious in some way, and inappropriate. One of said bosses then wrote me to admonish me saying though he found it ‘endearing’ that I should be professional when signing off, ‘Yours sincerely’, ‘Kind Regards’, ‘Many Thanks’. WHEN DID THESE THINGS BECOME MORE FORMAL THAN YOURS FAITHFULLY??! Clearly the ignorant business exec in question has never seen the phrase ‘in good faith’ or he would know that yours faithfully derived from this phrase meaning, of course, that the sender of the letter or contract would not try to cheat the receiver in business terms and so on. And the more frightening thing is that neither of my bosses stood up for me, because neither of them had ever, according to them, seen the sign off ‘yours faithfully’ before. These people all have masters in business administration. Can anyone help me vent??? WHAT is going on here!???
Tess, I’d regard “yours faithfully” as being closely akin to “yours truly.” I’m guessing that it derives from “your faithful and obedient servant,” the latter being in vogue in the 1700′s and used by people who were nobody’s servants. Your client and your boss come across as rather illiterate oafs.
Having said all that, I’d consider using the plain-vanilla “sincerely,” which can be used even if you are not totally sincere.
Yes, I also thought that. I think I just needed somebody to see the illiterate oaf-ness of them as well! I don’t think I would personally go that far back to explain ‘yours faithfully’ to someone. To me ‘yours faithfully’ today implies that I am being both honest and trustworthy. ‘Sincerely’ only implies truthfulness, which is why you use it when you already know someone – the trust is already implicit in the relationship. I did some googling to see if I was simply out of date and one of the first things to come up was a website called ‘investorwords.com’, which had a great definition of the similar phrase, ‘in good faith’; “The observance of honorable intent in business relations and the avoidance of any attempts to deceive in assuming and performing contractual obligations.”
Quite phenomenal that somebody found it so inappropriate (RELIGIOUS no less) that he couldn’t just ignore it, he had to complain about it! It frightens me, but I am obviously more passionate about language than the sirs in question.
i want to improve my English language.
How can I write English sentences effectively?
I smsed to a girl whom I just met once who came to my office for some business. I asked her if i could keep in touch with her and she said yes. One day i sent her an sms just to ask her how she was and signed off as yours, now i don’t hear from her. Please.. i don’t know what happened.
Darmendar: I would say she probably thought you were coming on to her or something. I would never just close “Yours”. SMS’ are a little informal, try using a more informal close. Such as “Thanks”.
People who resort to “religious” reasons/excuses for things should be locked up. Traditions of several hundred years can’t be just suddenly ignored because someone gets it into their head that it offends their religion (which is always a matter of “human” interpretation anyway). The person who complained that “Yours faithfully” was religious in some way should be sent an English business letters book of some kind, gift wrapped, as a gift to help them overcome their ignorance and illiteracy. You should also find out where they studied business or management or whatever and write a formal letter of complaint about their former student. This reflects badly on the educational institution where this person has studied.
I utterly agree with the comments of Caroline Leek. I came to this site because I was shocked that the president of a professional society had sent a notice of a meeting to professional colleagues, all of whom he or she knows, and signed it Yours faithfully rather than Yours sincerely
I like to use “Yours lustily” if it’s a letter to someone outside of my immediate family, otherwise I just use my initials followed by two kisses (Xx).
I have also found “Yours fellatiously” to be a particularly useful sign-off, especially when trying to win favour with a bank manager or disgruntled boss.
I’m definitely not a big fan of “See ya!” or “laters!” – but I do sometimes find it appropriate, after a tiresome exchange of emails, to simply finish with the onomatopoeic “Arrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!!” – sometimes with the exclamation marks running into the tens of thousands.
Adios!
How about an email with “Blissfully yours” as sign off . any one knows waht it means?
Why is it the Americans insist on doing things differently, i’m sure they do it for the sake of it – What’s wrong with the British way of doing things anyway…. its like they left for the colonies and have purposely try to do things differently ever since.
Yours faithfully.
One British citizen.
I have to totally agree with Toby Lerone.
Except the Americans don’t do it for the sake of it. They do it because it is the lazy way. this way you don’t (or can’t) have to follow any rules and if you do, just change the rules (and the spelling) to the simplist form.
The way they have changed the date system is strange too. I am still trying to work out what happened on the 9th of November?
All the very best,
Wadey (An Aussie).
I am a North European and I am affected by both UK/US writing styles of English although I do not consider American English a real English language. I usually use “Best regards” but once or twice I unintentionally misspelled “Beat retards”. Take a look at your keyboard and you will see if one is not careful and has large fingers one can easily write “Beat retards” instead of “Best regards”.
Also, I would never write “Best Regards” although many increasingly try to “kiss up” and use uppercase letter for “Regards” as well.
I always thought that writing “Sincerely” alone was fine and I sometimes feel that writing “Yours” is very intimate and could feel even sexual…
especially when a man writes to a man.
Even writing “Dear Sir” where both words I write from an uppercase letter although others I see write “Dear sir” instead. So writing “Dear” sometimes to me sounds intimate too much when writing to another male. I suspect someone who created this writing style with “yours” and “dear” could have been a “same sex advancer”… LOL (just joking).
Arthur, gentlemen, gentile men, ladies
how about using the sign off “Yours sexually” and/or “Anally yours”. Also: “Yours orally” and “Yours unfaithfully” could be good ones written to good (sexual) friends or partners. Another “good” one would be “Yours sin cerely” where “sin” is separated “from the rest of the word. :Let me just write a few more without the bla-bla-bla:
Yours sinfully
Yours mentally
Yours physically
Yours emotionally
Yours infinitely
Yours now and always
Yours yours yours
Yours and only
Yours not
Yours philosophically
etc.
I’m sorry if I insulted anyone.
Yours truly not,
John
My ex-girlfriend used to sign off her emails with “Go fuck yourself”
Maybe I should have took this as a sign we were always destined to fail…
It’s all quite simple.
In a business letter:
Dear Sir, Yours faithfully;
Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms, Yours faithfully;
Dear John/Jane, Yours sincerely.
In any other correspondence, regardless of media, there are no rules: do what you think is appropriate.
I prefer to alternate between “Regards,” and “Kind regards,” as both seem to be resonably neutral expressions. I agree with J Miles P about creating consistency.
To all who think “Yours” would be too “intimate”. Yours is not only 1. person singular but 2. person plural – which English has lost, but can be seen in other European languages like German “Ihr” or French “Votre” and in this case it is a form of politeness and so joined with respect and of course personal distance!
To all who think such phrases are too disingenous and hypocritical. So I think in present days it is possible to write either … with the expression of my great displeasedness – in a letter of complaint
Tess,
I’m sorry to hear that the ignorance and stupidity of those set above you has caused you trouble.
You might refer them to one of the standard works (Fowler’s Usage or something). Obviously, if you *were* being religious, you would have used the non-standard form, “Yours Faith-fully”, with a capital F, or something similar.
Why is it that the ignorant and just plain stupid have all the imperium, but none of the auctoritas? They have no idea what they’re talking about, but they have a big stick with which to hit you.
*Sigh*
Welcome to the uneducated generation. The generation that “finks”, “lolz” and “innit”s, and sees nothing wrong with it in the process.
“Its a natural development of language” some high profile people argue. I just consider it to be bad manners to get it so wrong and not to care. I don’t know why I feel like that, its just the way it is.
I’m no saint when it comes to language, but I do try to correct mistakes (how many have you counted so far), but when I read statements like “Is it just me or does nobody have manors these days” – I want to strangle the perpetrator. In that instance, at least someone had the wit to respond that they only lived in a normal sized house.
I was always taught ‘You should be sincere in business and faithful to your friends, so of course some idiot got it backwards when signing letters.’
I’ve always done that since then, but really, I don’t think it matters. No one really takes in the valediction anyway.
Speaking of lazy, Wadey… I guess as an Aussie you are lying on your back typing this because of your expert capitalization skills (or capitalisation if you can’t handle the spelling difference). I can handle both
I do agree about the date thing. But that’s more a matter that in North America, they haven’t fully adopted the metric system. A shame really because since I am used to both systems, it’s always confusing for me so I usually stick to ISO or include the month abbrev. More unwieldy but I’m not as lazy as an Australian so I can handle it.
Even though I’ve been taught to use “Yours sincerely” or “Yours truly”, or the reverse (Sincerely yours or Truly yours) I always refrained from using it because it always seemed insincere or false to me. I also agree, using “yours” is too intimate for my taste as a business salutation. I wouldn’t even use it for my friends/family, preferring xxx or whatever Arthur R S Eagle would find appropriate.
I picked up using “Kind regards”, or just “Regards”, as a salutation because it had the right tone for business, and have stuck with it for the past 10 years or so. You can use it when you’re being insincere and false without guilt.
I personally love it when non native English speakers literally translate their salutations into English. My time in Netherlands, I saw “with friendly greetings” which directly translates from ” Met vriendelijke groeten” or also “met vrolijk groeten”. However the reverse translations (by non native Dutch speakers into Dutch) are usually more interesting…
In Dutch, vrolijk is sometimes confused by non native dutch speakers with vrouwlijk which means womanly…
Also non native dutch speakers will mispell “groeten” with “groenten” (which means vegetables).
So if you’re reading a letter in Dutch, you sometimes get letters with the closing..
“with womanly greetings” or “with friendly veggies”.
Will that catch on in English?
Good thing that Tess didn’t sign off with “Yours in Christ”. Is that appropriate for a business letter? (I’m being sarcastic; don’t crucify me! Sorry, bad pun :-O)
It is a shame this string turned into an ugly American discussion. I was curious as to the origins of some closings and found this page. Throughout time word usage, like everything else, obviously changes. It makes no sense to expect language to remain unaltered while the rest of the world moves on. Resisting change simply because you feel that any change stems from ignorance or laziness seems self righteous to me. If you can’t get past the use of “Sincerely,” in a business letter from an American, you should ask yourself whether your priorities are in check and whether you have too much time on your hands. That’s an acceptable valediction in America, according to my alma mater’s business writing professors.
Dear Tess,
I fully understand your wrath! No wonder our economy is in such a mess, when senior managers waste valuable time arguing over semantics. When working for Social Services, I was directed to compose a ‘Communications Policy’. However, my university- educated bosses complained bitterly because I used the word ‘facilitate’ – which they criticised as being too pompous (and could I please use simple language?). They would not accept that it was a word in common usage! Grrr!!!
Yours most sincerely,
Ivor
Can I just point out to the North American dislikers, that language form does change over time? Like how in North America, practice is both the verb and the noun, while in “non-American” English, practice is a noun and practise is a verb. Language will change over the course of time. Take the invasion of William the Conqueror into England, and how that changed the shape of what we call Modern English. Take Creole, a mix of French, Portuguese, Spanish, and native languages, that morphed into Creole. Take Japanese, which took certain characters of Chinese.
Now just think.