Recently, I ended an email with 「ありがとうございます！」, and one of my friends let me know that the proper phrase is 「よろしくお願いします」. I found it natural to end the email by thanking the other party, but my friend says it appears unprofessional and unrefined. I'm not a Japanese native, so I wanted to get some opinions from you all who know better than me!
by NazeerN
10 comments
よろしくお願いします is the natural and usual way to end an email in Japanese, but it’s very likely your email reads as non-native anyway and it’s clear you’re making an effort to be polite, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
If you work in Japanese or with Japanese clients and colleagues, you can use よろしくお願いします from now on.
I can’t even write an email in English properly.
There are lots of guides but unless you are intentionally rude. People won’t care.
Depends on the context but if you want just a little more flavor、you can put よろしくお願いいたします。
Another slight nuance is that よろしくお願いします carries a connotation of “Thank you in advance,” while ありがとうございます carries a connotation of “Thank you (for helping me / doing this for me)” after the fact. This is partly why よろしく is more common when you’re initiating an email exchange or making a request and ありがとう would be more appropriate at the end of the exchange.
Yeah. Letter writing has its own rules. How often do you wrap up a conversation by saying, “Yours truly,” and then saying your own name? How often do you walk up to a cashier, look at their name tag and say, “Dear [insert name here], I would like to purchase these goods in exchange for currency…”
Just wait until you start writing extremely formal documents, and discover that they’re written in plain form!
These conventions don’t make sense in any language. Just roll with it.
It just a thing like… putting “over” at the end of every end of talking on a radio type deal. Its like Best Regards kind of thing.
I don’t think they’re going to care. Today I wrote an email to my colleague and made the subject “どうぞよろしくお願いいたします.” Which is incredibly cringe, but I couldn’t think of anything else to put. 😂 Using politeness is always appreciated, don’t worry too much.
Japanese here!
It is not wrong, but よろしくお願いします(or ～いたします) would be natural, especially if it is a formal email. It is like a standard phrase, and we put this phrase at the end of an email even when we are actually not asking the person to do something.
If I wanted to include “thank you” to thank the person for something, I would write ～ありがとうございます。引き続きよろしくお願いいたします。
you could also say よろしくお願いいたします, よろしくお願い申し上げます(The latter sounds more formal and polite, and it’s used for example in business emails).
you could also put どうぞ or 何卒(nani tozo(Not “nani sotsu!!!”)) before the phrase.
Similarly, I treat some form as お世話になっております as basically “Hello”, even when it doesn’t really apply in any literal sense.
If it’s a formal/professional email, end with よろしくお願いします。 or its variations.