"Dear Mary": Email etiquette

In emails that I think are likely to be of little to no consequence, where I am unlikely to meet or indeed have never met the intended recipient, I generally use this format:

Mr/Mrs/Miss X,

yada yada yada

Thanks, (this part is optional, depending on whether I like the person)

Mary.

However I today was writing an email and decided to take a little more care and therefore used what you'll generally find to be talked of as the best word to use as the start of an email “Dear”. But it occurred to me how odd this word actually is. Having only met him once, the person I was emailing wasn't exactly dear to me although I liked him enough not to want to use the rather abrupt address of simply using his name as I've put above, which rather gives the feeling of “hey you, do this”. Similarly it feels rather out of place when people email me with “Dear Mary” when I know I am not dear to them. Continuing with the example of the email I sent earlier, I've received a reply and it was begun “Dear Mary”. Of course, it was the appropriate wording, especially as I had used it myself but in both emails it looked odd to me.

Ironically, I wouldn't use “Dear” when emailing any of the people who actually are dear to me, in fact those closest to me are unlikely to get any kind of salutation in the emails they receive from me as they are the most informal communications I send and therefore I generally launch straight into the content of whatever I need from them. But then despite there being nothing at the beginning, there will probably be love and kisses at the end.

So basically what I'm saying is maybe we need rethink the word “dear” at the beginning of emails as we really only use it when addressing those who aren't dear to us and never use it when addressing those who are. Then again, it’s probably just that I have a problem with reading the word too much, most people see “dear” simply as the-word-you-use-before-a-name-in-correspondence but I always see that word as in person-who-is-dear-to-me.

Even so, “dear” is a handy little word and I will probably continue to use it!

 

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