How to End a Letter: Sign-Offs That Land Right

You wrote the whole letter, and now you are stuck on two words at the bottom. How to end a letter is one of those small decisions that carries more weight than it should, because the sign-off is the last thing the reader sees and it sets the tone you leave them with.

Formal Sign-Offs

For job applications, official requests, and anyone you do not know well, stay safe and professional:

• Sincerely — the reliable default, never wrong
• Best regards — professional, but a touch warmer
• Kind regards — common in British and European business writing
• Respectfully — for formal or hierarchical contexts
• Yours faithfully — UK style when you opened with "Dear Sir or Madam"

Casual and Friendly Sign-Offs

For colleagues you know, ongoing threads, and warmer relationships:

• Best — short, modern, hard to overuse
• Thanks or Thanks so much — when there is genuinely something to thank them for
• Cheers — friendly, common in the UK and Australia, casual in the US
• Take care — warm without being too intimate

Sign-Offs to Avoid

A few closings quietly work against you. "Love" is too intimate for anything professional. "Yours truly" reads as dated. "Sent from my iPhone" is not a sign-off, and "Thx" or "Rgds" look careless. Skipping the closing entirely can come across as abrupt.

Match the Sign-Off to the Tone

The right closing depends on the rest of the letter. A warm, chatty email that ends with "Respectfully" feels off. A formal complaint that ends with "Cheers" undercuts itself. The sign-off should match the temperature of everything above it.

That is the part people get wrong, and it is hard to judge in your own writing. A tool like WunderType helps here: you can rewrite a closing in a more formal or more casual tone in one shortcut, in whatever app you are in. The same tone changer approach works on the whole message, and for work email our guides to polishing a business email and writing a follow-up email cover the body as well as the close. Job hunting? The cover letter writer handles the hardest sign-off of all.

A Simple Formula

When in doubt: a short closing line of genuine thanks or a clear next step, then a clean sign-off, then your name. "Thank you for your time. Best regards, Sam." It works almost everywhere, and you can adjust the warmth up or down from there.

Download WunderType from the Mac App Store and get the tone of every sign-off right.