For years in email I've used "G'day" as a greeting term and "Until anon" as a sign-off. I regularly get asked what "Until anon" means and why I use it, so here you go.
"Until anon" came about because my undergraduate university started giving out free email accounts way back in 1994. This involved using the Unix command line tool Pine and just plain old text, so it seemed to merit some work to stand out.
At the time I found email fascinating because it was not quite a formal letter and not quite a memo, and not speech, it was something in between them all. (Ah, would that it had retained such novelty.) Some people used their email in a very dry, functional manner. Others treated it as a sort of pseudo-speech (Instant Messaging before IMs were common, even though chat and IRC existed around the same time) by writing with a very oral feel and leaving out a greeting and a sign-off. And at the other end of the spectrum some people wrote email as if it were a letter, which I thought was bizarre because they might be writing to someone three doors down who they would see multiple times a day.
As such, I made a conscious decision to find a unique sign-on and sign-off to personalise my email and also be a bit of a conversation piece. I initially started by stealing Kermit the Frog's "Hi Ho", but one day a US friend pointed out an alternative meaning for the second word, so I dropped that one. "G'day" was an easy way to signify that I am Australian, and was friendly and informal, so I adopted it. Job done.
The sign-off was harder to find. I wanted something less formal than "Yours Sincerely" and "Regards", less generic than "Yours" or "Cheers" etc. Then "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead" came out in 1995. In this great filmic mash-up of gangster and romance tropes, two mob enforcers visit the lead character Jimmy the Saint (an ex-mobster himself) to request he visit their boss. Here's the script excerpt:
GANGSTER 1
Jimmy the Saint.
JIMMY THE SAINT
Hello, boys.
GANGSTER 2
That's a nice suit. Versace ?
JIMMY THE SAINT
No.
GANGSTER 2
Armani?
JIMMY THE SAINT
No.
GANGSTER 2
Hugo Boss?
JIMMY THE SAINT
What's with this?
GANGSTER 1
Ellie's P.O. said he needed a hobby.
JIMMY THE SAINT
Fashion is his hobby?
GANGSTER 1
He tried makin' his own pasta. Didn't move him.
GANGSTER 2
A three-button ventless. I like that, Jimmy. Classy. 'Course, uh, you gotta have the build for it.
JIMMY THE SAINT
What's up ?
GANGSTER 1
He wants to see you, Jim.
JIMMY THE SAINT
Aw, come on. What for ?
GANGSTER 1
Hey, what can I tell ya ? He says, "Gus, I wanna see Jimmy the Saint." I said, "Boss, Jimmy the Saint ain't mixin' it up no more." He says, "Gus, I wanna see Jimmy the Saint." Here we are. The point of me arguing seemed, uh, specious.
GANGSTER 2
Gus is readin' the dictionary.
JIMMY THE SAINT
Good. When does he want to see me ?
GANGSTER 2
Now.
JIMMY THE SAINT
Now?
GANGSTER 1
Anon.
GANGSTER 2
You know the dance.
I thought "anon" was hilarious in this context, and I happened to be also reading Chaucer and Shakespeare at the time, so "Until anon" used as a farewell seemed a more unique and fun way to saying "until we next meet". I thought this was perfect for email, especially as it's curiously warm and yet can cover a lot of email contexts.
It also turns out to be a great conversation starter, ironically.
Until anon,
Sean