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I often receive e-mails which start with the sentence- 'Greetings of the day.' instead of Good morning or good afternoon. I am wondering whether it is correct to use this in formal emails and letters.

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    It would be out of the ordinary in British English usage.That doesn't automatically mean it is not appropriate in the usage of other Englishes around the world. If you often see it, that might mean it is fine where you are, but if in doubt avoid it, especially in international communications.
    – Spagirl
    Oct 26, 2016 at 9:55
  • This is probably a mashup of "greetings" and "top of the day".
    – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_
    Nov 10, 2020 at 18:53

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If I receive an e-mail that begins with "Greetings of the day", I will assume that it is spam and automatically reach for the delete button. If I am e-mailing someone that I know (or have e-mailed before), I usually begin with "Hi, Fred" (you can more or less say whatever you like in e-mails - there are no rules). If I am e-mailing someone that I don't know, then I might treat it like writing a letter and begin with "Dear Mr. Jones".

If you want me to read your e-mails, always address me by name. However, if you are sending me spam, please do begin with "Greetings of the day" and I'll know not to read any further and press the delete button.

Having said all that, I do receive perfectly good e-mails (from British companies) that begin with "Good morning". There's nothing wrong with it. "Greetings of the day", however, sounds like Babu English and is probably best avoided.

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    I'm with Mick. The closest British English to "Greetings of the day" would be "Season's Greetings" or "The top of the morning". "Season's Greetings" is American. In Britain it’s generally heard as very lazy and it would only ever be used in a festival season lasting at least two or three days, ruling out anything “…of the day”. “Top of the morning” is used only with acknowledgement of both speaker and listener that it comes from Irish, whether a translation from Gaelic or originating in the English spoken in Ireland; so much so that it's usually spoken with a comic-opera accent.
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Nov 10, 2016 at 23:25
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    I tend to think that e-mails (from British companies) that begin with "Good morning" do that because the writers think e-mails don’t need to follow normal rules of writing…
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Nov 10, 2016 at 23:25
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    I can't see any mention of Babu English in your link, but there is a good description (with examples) here: bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126856.html
    – user184130
    Aug 11, 2018 at 8:24
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It definitely sounds like it is from someone from India to me. I got one today and they signed their name with a very Italian-sounding name, but they were not fooling me. I live in Italy and I know what a person who normally speaks Italian, trying to write in English sounds like, and even Google Translate would not say "Greetings of the Day!" No thanks, "Alvaro."

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I'm not sure there's such a thing as a "formal" email. Email is informal, and generally doesn't follow the rules of formal correspondence.

If you're referring to an email message conveying information of a "serious" or formal nature (e.g., business correspondence rather than casual conversation), it is probably better to keep it concise and just get to the point, leaving out fluff like "Good morning" (which has no relevance, anyway, since you don't know when the message will be read).

But if you do put in some form of such opening text, "Greetings of the day" is such generic blather that people will associate it with spam, as Mick suggests.

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There is no earthly reason to wish someone good day etc. in an email, formal, or informal, just as it has never been the practice (at least in the twentieth century) to do so in a written letter, at least in my experience in Britain.

An informal communication cuts out the superfluous politenesses, which in English are really only:

  1. The address (Dear Sir, Your Lordship, etc.)
  2. The parting phrase (Yours sincerely etc.)

For a formal email (e.g. to a business or someone you don’t know) I would retain them. For an informal email I would start “John” and sign off with “David”. If you are a young person “Hi John” might be more usual.

If I wrote “Hoping this finds you as it leaves me” I would be trying to be humorous.

But the French do it differently. It takes years of study to learn how to sign off a letter in French.

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