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Good Morning English experts!

I'm confused about using the salutations such as above. I know 'Good Morning' should be used before noon, and then 'Good Afternoon', and 'Good Day' is considered obsolete, but what more formal greeting to use in e-mails?

'Hi' is commonly accepted in not fully-formal e-mails, but when I write e-mail to help support, I don't think that 'Hi Help Support' is appropriate. 'Dear Help Support' sounds strange for me (Dear Human Being Which Name I Don't Even Know). I'd like to use something like 'Good Morning', but...

Well, I usually write e-mails in the evening so I could use 'Good Evening', but I don't know when the mail would be read. Probably early morning, but I can't be sure.

So, what of 'Good Something' greeting forms is the most acceptable in such e-mails? Or is there some similar alternative?

Peter Mortensen
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Danubian Sailor
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  • Actually, SE rigorously opposes all unnecessary chat in a question and "Hi everyone!" should be edited out. – Andrew Leach Oct 14 '13 at 07:06
  • Just say, "Hello" and then launch into your problem. The single best thing you can do to "make their day" is to provide every piece of information they will need to diagnose and solve your problem and nothing else – Jim Oct 14 '13 at 07:06
  • Good – mplungjan Oct 14 '13 at 08:24
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    @mplungjan; Your timezone, their timezone, the timezone on which the site operates (if known)? A can of worms. – Tim Lymington Oct 14 '13 at 09:38
  • I meant - literally Good – mplungjan Oct 14 '13 at 09:42
  • @mplungjan But is the "appropriate greeting" determined by the timezone of the sender or that of the recipient? [That's a rhetorical question.] – TrevorD Oct 14 '13 at 12:00
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    Salutations should not be used in emails (unless you are a spammer, in which case please continue to use them so your message is instantly filterable). – T.E.D. Oct 14 '13 at 13:23

2 Answers2

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There is no "most acceptable" form of greeting for e-mails. It depends on so many factors:

  • whether you are writing to an individual (by name) or to a company or department;
  • whether you know the person to whom you are writing and, if so, how well you know them;
  • whether you are on first-name terms with the person;
  • whether the message is for business, personal, or other private purposes;
  • whether the message itself is formal or informal;
  • possibly whether the message is likely to be forwarded to, and/or seen by, other people.

Personally, I avoid using the time of date in a greeting (or elsewhere in the message), except in certain circumstances, such as:

  • it is relevant to the message;
  • I know what timezone the recipient is in;
  • possibly, whether I know how likely the recipient is to see the message fairly soon. (There is little point is writing "Good Morning" if they may not read the message until tomorrow afternoon!)

Furthermore, I question how many people actually read or notice the greeting and, even if they do, how many pay any attention to it.

In summary, my advice would be:

  • if it is a formal or important e-mail, then write it as if it were an 'old fashioned' letter (see the answer from WS2);
  • otherwise address it however seems appropriate to you.

Addendum in response to OP's comment: maybe I should ask what would be appropriate greeting when, for example, 'Guten Tag' in German or 'Dzień Dobry' in Polish is appropriate. They are not timezone-dependent.

I know 'Guten Tag' in German directly translated is Good Day, and will assume that the Polish is similar.

  • If it's a formal e-mail, the first of my summary bullet points still applies.

  • In some cases, such as e-mailing a support desk (as mentioned in the question), I may not bother with a preliminary greeting.

  • In some cases, using just the person's name (e.g. "John", "Mary", "Mr Smith") would be suitable, just as you may address them when speaking to them.

  • In other cases, I might use Hi or Hello. Personally, I regard those as fairly informal, but they seem to be accepted in semi-formal messages.

  • If you really want to use something close to "Guten Tag" that is independent of time, I would think that it would have to be Hello or Good Day. (But, at least in British English, when meeting someone, Good Day is used as Goodbye more often than as Hello.) Or you use a time-related greeting such as Good Morning, Good Evening, etc. based on when you write the message or when you think it is likely to be read.

[Beyond that, I'm inclined to say that this question is probably off-topic for this site, because any answers will be primarily opinion-based.]

TrevorD
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  • Well, maybe I should ask what would be appropriate greeting when, for example, 'Guten Tag' in German or 'Dzień Dobry' in Polish is appropriate. They are not timezone-dependent. – Danubian Sailor Oct 14 '13 at 12:02
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What is wrong with simply following the letter convention? I never say, Hi, Hello, or Good Morning in emails, though I use all those expressions in speech.

I address people as 'Dear', e.g. Dear Albert, Dear Mrs Howes, Dear Prime Minister (though I can't remember when I last wrote to him) etc. If I am writing a business email and I do not know the gender of the person who will be reading it I simply write as anyone living 70 years ago might have done; Dear Sir or Madam.

By the way, I wouldn't mention to the Aussies that 'Good Day' is obsolete!

WS2
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    'Dear Sir or Madam' sounds for my non-native ear very awkward. Just like 'God bless You' would be (but it's perfectly normal in Bavaria and Austria). But maybe it's just a cultural bias. – Danubian Sailor Oct 14 '13 at 11:44
  • “Dear Sir or Madam” has always sounded most peculiar to me, too. It sounds to me like I know who will be receiving the letter, but wish to indicate that I doubt their gender. Oddly, the more contemporary, but otherwise wholly identical, “Dear Sir/Madam” feels just fine for me. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 14 '13 at 12:09
  • @Lukasz L Younger people may consider 'Dear Sir or Madam' as dated, but then so am I (dated). It does tend to mark you out as someone over 60. But it works well with delinquent suppliers, recalcitrant civil servants etc. 'Dear Sir or Madam' indicates you are taking a business-like approach to the whole matter and you are probably someone with whom they ought not mess too much. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 12:15
  • For me what is awkward, is not 'Sir' or 'Madam', but 'Sir or Madam'. It sounds for me like 'Good Morning or Afternoon'. But if it's absolute OK for English ear, I ought to get used to it. – Danubian Sailor Oct 14 '13 at 12:22
  • -1 I'm afraid this answer turns the post into a "primarily opinion-based" one -- i.e., off-topic. – Kris Oct 14 '13 at 12:34
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    @ŁukaszL. Both "Dear Sir or Madam" and "Dear Sir/Madam" are very common in (British) English correspondence, particularly when a letter is addressed to a company, but personally I never use them. When doing professional legal work, I was taught that, when addressing a letter (this was in the days of manual typewriters) to a company, you are writing to the company and not to an individual. Any individual receiving/reading it would be doing that on behalf of the company, and therefore the correct form of address is "Dear Sirs" (plural) referring to the company. – TrevorD Oct 14 '13 at 12:35
  • @TrevorD 'Dear Sirs' - I've never heard that form, it is really commonly accepted, and would noone be offended for using exclusively masculinum form? – Danubian Sailor Oct 14 '13 at 12:41
  • I would have to say it's less common that it used to be, partly because letters are now far less common that e-mails. But it used to be very common and standard (in BrE; I don't know about AmE). On the other side, the gender issue is far more prominent these days than it used to be. There are many Qs on here discussing the use of the masculine when gender is unknown, and the common opinion is that he, they, chairman, etc. are all still acceptable. As I emphasised, you are writing to a company (not an individual) when using it, and you can't really use "Dear it" or "Dear Company"! – TrevorD Oct 14 '13 at 12:49
  • What is wrong with following the letter convention is that emails are not letters! It is a completely different medium, with completely different strenths, weaknesses, dynamics, and conventions. It never ceases to amaze me how many folks on this stack miss this. – T.E.D. Oct 14 '13 at 14:01
  • @T.E.D.There is something in your comment which seems to have escaped namely the explanation as to how emails differ from letters, other than in the speed of transit to the recipient. – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 14:18
  • @WS2 - You say that like you believe that turnaround time (aka: interactivity) is not in fact the single biggest driving factor in how humans use all communications media. – T.E.D. Oct 14 '13 at 19:16
  • @T.E.D. Did I say that? – WS2 Oct 14 '13 at 22:08
  • @T.E.D. If one is writing formal business correspondence, does it matter whether the transmission is electronic or snail mail? Why should that affect the way in which you write to the other party? To give an example, if you need to write, say, a legal 'letter' (item of correspondence) to another party, I don't see that the method of transmission should affect the way it is written. Before e-mails, we had faxes - but faxes were usually just a standard letter sent via a fax machine rather than via postal mail. Cont'd ... – TrevorD Oct 16 '13 at 18:57
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    ... contd If you attach a letter to a skeleton e-mail (using the e-mail solely as the transmission method), I presume you would write it as a letter. If on the other hand, you put the same context in the body of the e-mail instead of as an attachment, does that make it an 'e-mail' requiring to be written in a different style? Yes, the vast majority of e-mails are not 'letters', but why shouldn't some be 'equivalent' to letters? – TrevorD Oct 16 '13 at 19:02
  • @TrevorD. Quite right. You express my view entirely. The fact that we have computers does not affect the rules of grammar, nor of good manners, nor should it the way we relate to one another. So why do people write differently when they send emails to the way they wrote in letters? 'Don't try and re-invent the wheel', is a motto of mine! – WS2 Oct 16 '13 at 19:04
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    @T.E.D. No turnaround time is not always "the single biggest driving factor in ... communications" - sometimes accuracy and/or presentation of content are equally, if not more, important. Again, in a legal context, the 'content' of the correspondence (what is said; what is omitted; how it is expressed) is often critical. – TrevorD Oct 16 '13 at 19:06
  • @TrevorD - You're totally missing the point. I'm not talking about what's "important". I'm talking about how the conventions for bracketing our conversations (what we computer folk call "handshaking") are different for each media, in a way that's tailored to the media. Snail-mail needs a very heavy amount of handshaking due to the huge turn-around time on the messages. Telephone conversations need almost none: Just a breif exchange at the start. Email is in between the two. It is simplex like mail but has a shorter turn-around time, along with tools that do a lot of that handshaking for you. – T.E.D. Oct 16 '13 at 19:34
  • @TrevorD - email "grew up" with its more informal conventions, just like the Telephone, IRC, and Stack Exchange posts all grew up with theirs. Trying to apply the conventions of formal letter-writing to any of the above is just wrong. – T.E.D. Oct 16 '13 at 19:44
  • @T.E.D. I'm saying that, even in the days of letters, the way you would address & write a letter to a lover, would be rather different from what you would use on business correspondence. The same would apply to an e-mail. 'Hand-shaking' should not exclude politeness to and respect for the other party. You also need to bear in mind that there can be a cultural aspect to this. Some cultures are, by nature, more formal than others, and I'm sure that would be reflected in forms of address for e-mails, etc.. I suspect that US culture is among the most informal. – TrevorD Oct 16 '13 at 20:05
  • @TrevorD - Nope. The words you'd use would certainly be different, but the form (Salutation, body, valediction, name) is identical for pretty much any properly written letter. Read any epistolary novel and you will see the gamut you describe, but all with this same form. But that is the form for letters, not for emails. – T.E.D. Oct 16 '13 at 20:15
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    And don't many e-mails have a Salutation (e.g. "Hi"), body (main text), valediction (e.g. "Regards"), name (Who wrote it)? This question started as (effectively) what you should use as the salutation. So we seem to be back to whether it should be "Hi", "Dear Sirs" or something in between - and you seemed to object that that was too 'letter-like'. – TrevorD Oct 16 '13 at 20:27
  • @TrevorD. Clearly there are formal regulations for expressing informality. – WS2 Oct 16 '13 at 21:10
  • @TrevorD - "Many" emails have those, in the same way that "many" snail-mails don't have them. In both cases, the writer is not using the proper form for that media. In the case of email, almost every one I receive that tries to pretend it is a formal letter is in fact spam. Its just as reliable an indicator of spam as obvious misspellings and grammatical errors. People who know what they are doing don't do that. If you want to mark yourself as one such person, and get a lot of your emails discarded unread as spam, by all means pretend you are sending a paper letter. – T.E.D. Oct 18 '13 at 14:44
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    @T.E.D. All I can say is that your experience is quite different to mine. To begin with, none of the spam that I receive in any way resembles a formal letter. (I have, whilst writing this just opened 4 such items, none of which resembled letters.) Moreover if, as you say, writing such letters makes it likely they will be deleted, why would spammers themselves use such methods? Finally you say 'the writer is not using the "proper form" for that media'. Who in the world, may I ask, has the authority to dictate what is the 'proper form'? – WS2 Oct 18 '13 at 22:02
  • @WS2 - Back in the day we internet users would gather such information up into "nettiqute" documents. We're not really much into central authorities though, so its tough to find something "official". For example, there are several such rules lists compiled at albion.com, but you can't really call them authoritative. There's also the IETF's RFCs, a few of which deal with such things. – T.E.D. Oct 18 '13 at 22:29