Netiquette

Improper netiquette (that's Network Etiquette for all you living under a rock) can be really annoying. Sometimes I get perturbed when an email starts off, "hey u" and other times I feel like it's completely appropriate. It's hard for me to articulate when it's okay to write in text talk and when it's not. In professional communication, it's obviously unacceptable, but where to you draw the line with friendly emails?


Also, how do you sign your emails? You want them to be warm, but not too chatty; pleasant but not over the top. I find it frustrating to always be thinking of new ways to sign emails. I used "Thank you" for a long time, but that one bothered me, because it's not always appropriate to say thank you unless someone in someway deserves a thank you. It seems weird to say, "Hi, how are you? yaddah yaddah. Thank you."

Then I used "Take care" for awhile, but then I noticed that several of the people converse with via email regularly use that exact phrase and you can never respond with same catch phrase. Plus, I don't want to be the copy cat that steals email signatures. This leaves me in a predicament. What other salutations are left? Sincerely is too formal. Best is too short. What's left out there in email-sign-off-phrases land?