Let’s Email in Italian! Part 2: Italian Salutations

Here is some information about how to write an email that will help with our latest discussion in the Conversational Italian! Facebook group.

We are talking this week about how to conclude an email or a letter. Read below and join the conversation on our Facebook group. I’d love to hear from you!

For more complete details, visit our sister blog, blog.learntravelitalian.com, from which this excerpt was taken. All material is courtesy of Stella Lucente, LLC, and www.learntravelitalian.com.

Italian Salutations for Emails, Texts, and Letters

After we’ve written our email, text, or formal letter, how should we sign off? As you can imagine, this is very different depending on how close the two correspondents are. For two friends, the typical spoken salutations, “Ciao” and “Ci vediamo,” are commonly used for emails and texts, as are the many idiomatic expressions such as “A presto” or “A dopo.”

For those who are close friends or family, one may send kisses as “baci” and sometimes hugs, “abbracci,” as we do in English. You can imagine that there are many variations on this theme, such as “un bacione” for “a big kiss.” “Un bacio” or “tanti baci” are other variations and mean “a kiss” and “many kisses.” There is one big difference between salutations in English and Italian, though: Italians normally do not sign off with the word “love,” as in “Love, Kathy.”

For business, the word “Saluti” is generally used in closing to mean “Regards.” One can also give “Un Saluto” or “Tanti Saluti.” “Cordialmente” means “Yours Truly.” “Cordali Saluti” or “Distinti Saluti” are particularly polite, meaning “Kind Regards” and “Best Regards.” “Sinceramente” means “Sincerely” but is not as often used in closing an email or letter.

Commonly Used Familiar Italian Salutations

Ciao	Bye
Ci vediamo	Good-bye (Until we see each other again.)
A presto!	See you soon!
A dopo!	See you later!
Baci	Kisses
Un bacio	A kiss
Un bacione	A big kiss
Tanti baci	Lots of kisses
Baci e Abbracci	Kisses and hugs

Commonly Used Formal Italian Salutations

Saluti	Regards
Un Saluto	Regards
Cordialmente	Yours truly
Cordali Saluti	Kind regards
Distinti Saluti	Best regards
Tanti Saluti	Many regards
Sinceramente	Sincerely