Quibble No. 3: Give my best

You get a lot of emails in grad school.

Emails from throughout the department and throughout the university, from secretaries to professors, PhD candidates to MA students, from department chairs to adjuncts.

And they all sign their emails with Best.

That's all. Just Best.

Best doesn't mean anything though. Best what?

Best... Wishes?

Best... Regards?

Best... Friends for Life?

Best... Buy?

Best... Western?

Alone--as a means of signing off a letter or email--Best holds no real connotation. No real feeling. At best, Best is an attempt to sound different in a goodbye without hitting the biggest cliché of all, Sincerely. But when everyone says Best--and doesn't know why they say it--isn't that a fulfillment of a cliché itself?

George Carlin had a routine about the way people said goodbye, and it includes the oddity of Best.

(It's Carlin, so it gets risque. Obligatory warning.)






I realize the photo above looks like the type of design you'd see spray painted on a trucker hat or a t-shirt at a mall kiosk in Charlotte or Tampa, circa 1992. Way ahead of you on that one.