i can also confirm that this is a common closing in less formal email in the Air Force. I see it 25-30 times per day.
Just wanted to add, my cousin, whose initials are JT and who writes his own correspondence for his small business, puts at the bottom left margin of each letter he sends out, “JT/vss.” I asked once who VSS was, and he said it was his nonexistent “Very Sexy Secretary.”
It may stand for “Victoria Regina” for Queen Victoria, or “Victor Richard.”
Even if you only read the title of the thread, why would you think that? Were you speculating that this might have been a business email sent in the nineteenth century?
Nitpick: these are valedictions, not salutations.
I love seeing old examples of those, woodcuts done in ASCII art. It was a simpler and more genteel time.
Or the sender fancied he was the Queen.
It’s a common delusion of grandeur. From Wikipedia:
“…a patient who has fictitious beliefs about his or her power or authority may believe himself or herself to be a ruling monarch who deserves to be treated like royalty…Some patients believe they are…the Queen of the United Kingdom”
They had 'em by 1840 or 50 or so; they were just called “telegrams”
(…but how many Queens Victoria were there?)
Four-year necro by a first time poster of a fourteen-year necro by another first time poster isn’t what amazes me. That this topic had been viewed 121,000 times with only 22 replies is what boggles my mind.
Do bot reads count?
hahahahahah, “CPL NENNO”. What a loser.
So that guy didn’t make it to GEN NENNO by now?
From the original e-mail as quoted by OP (emphasis added):
Nobody seems to have noticed, even after lo! these many years, but that doesn’t sound “Very Respectfully” at all.
You’re absolutely right! Good catch.
Not sure why I wrote that back in 2004. I know (and knew) that a salutation is a greeting, but I’ve never heard the formal term for a closing before now. In school I think we used the term “complimentary close.”