"Hope all is well"
Out of context: Reply #6
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- Horp0
I tend to say 'I hope you are well'. But only once a week to any given person, and not to friends or in social correspondence.
For some reason I can't articulate, this seems to be the better option at the start of relatively impersonal work related emails. If possible I try and start with something more relevant sounding like 'I hope you got on well with the project you mentioned last time we spoke' or etc.
I had a business partner once who's foibles drove me nuts and one of them was that he always wrote
Dear XXX,
I hope you are well?At the start of every email. I don't know why it drove me as nuts as it did but it did drive me absolutely nuts. He'd cc me on an email to a client and as soon as I read that I'd be face-butting my desk in despair. For a start, its not a question, so why the fucking question mark, and secondly, if you roll out a stock phrase every time without variation in every email, then it just becomes and irritating fence of letters that carry no empathic value at all, for the reader's eyes to climb over before they can digest your actual message.
He'd email people ten times in one day and always put 'I hope you are well?' at the top.
He also used to touch pregnant women's bellies as a social gesture (clients, friends and acquaintances I mean, not strangers) and that drove me nuts as well, but that's another story entirely.
Also, he looked like Krusty the Clown.
Its probably quite apparent by now that he used to annoy the absolute shit out of me.