There is real demand for email closings with more personality than "Best regards" — plenty of people search for exactly that. But most lists of "funny sign-offs" skip the actual risk: a closing line that clashes with the signature block underneath it reads as careless, not charming.
The closings below work because they are mild enough to survive being read by someone who has never met you, while still sounding like a person wrote them.
Closings That Read as Warm, Not Try-Hard
These work broadly because they don't require the recipient to be in on a joke. They read as a small amount of personality, not as an attempt at humor that might not land.
- "Onward"
- "More soon"
- "Back to it"
- "Until next time"
Where Personality Stops and Risk Starts
A closing line is competing for attention with everything below it — your name, title, and any compliance content like a disclaimer or license number. Once a closing is genuinely a joke rather than mildly warm phrasing, it puts that entire signature block at risk of being read as unserious, particularly on a first email to someone outside your company.
A reasonable filter: if the closing line would look out of place read aloud in a client meeting, it's too far for external correspondence. Internal email between people who already know each other tolerates far more.
Matching Personality to Who's Reading
- Colleagues you talk to daily: personality-forward closings are fine and often expected.
- Clients or prospects you've met before: mild warmth ("Talk soon", "Onward") without anything that requires shared context.
- First contact with someone senior, or anyone in a regulated field (legal, healthcare, finance): skip personality entirely and use a standard closing — the signature block is already doing the credibility work.