In a medium where it is often oddly difficult to interpret tone, where the lines of friendship, love and business are easily muddied, and where people are sometimes a little too eager to shine brightly in the drab sludge of daily missives, something as seemingly trivial as an e-mail signoff can loom large. It can be a clue to both the personality of the sender and the standing that the recipient has in the sender’s social universe. It can enlighten, amuse and enrage — sometimes all at once.

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With work emails, I generally tend to stick with a variation on the hopefully-safe-and-noncontroversial Thank You:

- Thanks,
- Thanks!
- Thank you!
- Thank you,
- Thanks a bunch,