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In Europe, it is not uncommon to receive emails with the valediction With best/kind regards, instead of the more typical and shorter Best/Kind regards.

When I see a colleague of mine writing such a phrase, I usually point out that it is a kind of old-fashioned affected valediction which, probably, nowadays, a native English speaker wouldn't write.

Am I right or wrong?

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    It is not a salutation. It is a closing or, as the tag says, valediction, a less used word.
    – user20792
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 3:49

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Closing an email with Regards, or Kind regards, is still very common in the UK, and not seen as old-fashioned there at all. Using the same in America may have a different reaction though; when I lived there before moving to Britain I thought it sounded old-fashioned as well.

As to why some Europeans add the "With" at the start, one could speculate it's because they would do so in their own language. Dutch emails tend to close with "Met Vriendelijke Groeten"; German emails often use "Mit besten Grüßen" or "Mit freundlichen Empfehlungen"; Italian emails can have "Con i migliori auguri". Perhaps it's just carried over from that.

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  • My point is that adding "With" makes it old fashioned. For instance, the Italian expression "Con i migliori auguri" is definitely old-fashioned and I wouldn't suggest using it.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 10:50
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    Yeah, I don't think that's a native speaker thing; in my entire email history, the only three people to use "With kind regards" are German/Belgian/Indian.
    – Andrew Lott
    Commented Nov 13, 2015 at 15:09
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I believe it has a lot to do with opinion, but I would agree with you: I do not see people using With best/kind regards.

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I usually write "Sincerely," or "Sincerely yours," to friends, colleagues, and business acquaintances. I sometimes write "Love," or "With love," to my wife.

I rarely see any of the four variations mentioned in the original post. All four of these variations are appropriate. One could argue that they are more appropriate than "Sincerely yours". Any of them would be a refreshing change from reading yet another American form letter.

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  • A quick search through my archived emails of the last few years (but most of the emails are now deleted, so the statistics is rather incomplete), tells that I received 109 emails ending with "Sincerely", and 588 with "Regards" and its variations (uhm, probably a bit less because of replies), some 30 of them start with "With" (e.g. several from Springer). To people I know I usually write "Cheers".
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 23:14

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