13 FOR REAL Ways to Sign Off an Informal Letter in IELTS General Writing

How do English native speakers sign off an informal letter?

Only one week to go before your IELTS exam and still not sure?

Here are some alternatives, choose the three ones you like best and memorise every word. Knowing how you are going to sign off the letter before you write it will help with task response and your vocabulary score.

Put them on a piece of card with one or two words missing. On the other side, write the full phrase. Test yourself over the next few days. Did you get every word of the phrase?

Definitions:

Sender – the person who is writing the letter

Recipient – the person who is going to receive the letter

Recipient – the person who is going to receive the letter

1.

Love to all,

Karen

all here means everybody in the recipient’s family

2.

Love to Betty and the kids,

Sarah

This one probably means you are writing to the husband of Betty (a woman’s name) and that they have some children. It implies a close friendship between the sender and the recipient or that the sender is a relative.

3.

It would be great to meet up again this year.

Yours,

Kat

yours has to be on a separate line. This one implies that the sender and recipient are friends who saw each other once last year, probably on holiday.

4. See you soon,

Jamie

So in this one, the sender intends to meet up with the recipient quite soon.

5. Hope to see you soon,

Betty

– note you do not need “I” at the beginning of this sentence. If you put I it makes it slightly less informal

6.

Write back soon,

Kate

This could be used for any sort of relationship between recipient and sender, so long as that relationship is informal and it is especially useful for an advice letter where there will be more than three letters in exchange.

7.

Bye for now,

Terry

This is safe for most informal letters.

8.

Looking forward to your reply,

Patty

Note: I look forward to your reply is too formal for an informal letter.

9.

Looking forward to seeing you this summer.

Until then,

Lillian

10.

Best regards,

An easy one, used as a standard reply.

11.

Best Wishes,

Used if you are fond of the person and want to wish them good luck.

12.

Drop me a line and tell me how you get on.

Good luck,

Tim

This is a good one for the end of an advice letter. Drop me a line means to write to me. How you get on refers to how good are the results of the advice.

13.

All the best,

Margot

XXX

Sometimes people sign X’s after their names. What do the X’s mean? At school, we used to joke that it depended on how many there were:

X love

XX hate

XXX adore