Is it churlish of me not to ‘kiss’ back at the end of e-mails?

I MANAGE private client money and recently I have had several female clients end e-mails with “x” and even “xx”. Whether this has something to do with the advent of texting I don’t know but I have noticed the majority ending with a kiss are sent from smart devices. I have not got a clue if it is etiquette for me to end my replies with a kiss too, but have decided not to as I consider it unprofessional. Am I doing something wrong? — Fund manager, male, 50s

Lucy answers

No, of course you aren’t doing anything wrong — and I suspect you know that without my telling you so. The thing about e-mail is that no one has the first idea how to begin or end their messages, even though we have all had 15 years or more of practice. This is bad in that it means people like you waste an awful lot of time worrying about whether they have committed serious breaches of etiquette in their sign offs, or whether what they have written is perfectly acceptable. But it is good in that there is no accepted way of doing it, so (more or less) anything goes. Everyone does it differently, so you can do what you like.

That said, you are managing the money of these women who are sending you electronic kisses, and that is a serious business. When in doubt you need to err on the side of formality.

Even if you take this too far and behave like a stuffed shirt, it is most unlikely to make them take their money away from you — but acting over familiar undermines trust and can in the long term hurt your reputation.

Moreover there is an asymmetry in this. It is more acceptable for women to be kissy than men.

Just in case you were wondering: are they flirting with me? The answer to that is I don’t know, it depends on the rest of the message, but on the whole I doubt it. It is possible they signed off like that by mistake.

When I’ve been writing a lot of personal emails and switch to work ones, I sometimes put kisses on the bottom absent-mindedly. Once I replied with kisses in a message to a reader who had taken exception to something I wrote and had written me a badtempered message. I was mortified when I realized what I’d done — but noted that he calmed down quite quickly; possibly the kisses helped.

On the whole, the xx on an e-mail is not a trend to be encouraged. It is even more forward than a peck on the cheek, and therefore even less of a good thing.

But it has one advantage over a real kiss: it doesn’t require reciprocity. If someone kisses you, you have to kiss them back; not to do so is not only insufferably rude,

it is downright weird. But in an e- mail there is no matching behavior required. Your clients can xx and xxooxx all they like. And you can best wishes, or rgds, or yours sincerely them in return, just as much as you like. Only, please, don’t write “best”. Or “bestest”.

Readers’ advice

As an old-age pensioner I say yes, but only one kiss, in person or in writing. Two kisses would be unprofessional. — OAP, male

No. X. — Male, 50

If you are like most fund managers, adding insult to injury by charging high fees for belowmarket performance, perhaps your more observant clients have rumbled this scam and are giving you a kiss-off rather than a kiss. Alternatively, have you considered that these clients may be signaling their desire for a more personal kind of service than you currently provide? —

Anonymous

Kindly and urgently provide me with your name and address. If you get kisses from clients you must be really good! Don’t return the kisses but use them as the best key performance indicator for the work provided. — Male, anonymous

Rather than take a rationalist approach I suggest you go empirical. Segment the e-mails into two equal proportions and reply to them with kisses on/ kisses off. Develop a data collection sheet that contains the inferential statistics you need to disprove the null hypothesis. — Anonymous

Savvy users of smart devices will change the default footer from “sent from my Samsung Galaxy S9 etc” to something more personal. “Regards XX” is going on every message they send whether to you or their significant other. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are special to them. — Anon

When signed off with an “x”, treat it as a sign that you can let your hair down a little, just in a different or subtle way with them. You can say “cheers” or “thanks” rather than “thank you”, you can be more forgiving about the odd grammar slip, you might even be able to get away with skipping a tie at a client meeting if you want. That’s the spirit behind dropping an “x” or whatever. You can still appear very responsible and thoughtful, but if you feel under pressure to be stiff, just know that you don’t have to be. —

Anonymous

Do not x back. The “kiss” could become a sexual harassment issue. — Anonymous

I think this is a great question. I’m really surprised by the volume of business e- mail ending with kisses recently. I had one recently on a fund-raising for £1 million. I don’t x unless I’m dealing with family or close friends. — AndrewV

Try signing off with some zzzzs… that will confuse them! — Scrooge