Closing an email / Formules de politesse

Hello,

I have received some emails with this sort of phrase at the bottom (24 of them at this point) that gave me a little difficulty.

Vous en souhaitant bonne réception,

Comme...
Vous en souhaitant bonne réception, je reste à votre disposition pour tout complément d'information.
Vous en souhaitant bonne réception et restant disponible pour d’éventuel test à mon retour de congé.

So I ask myself, what does that really mean? You it wishing good reception? Seems that is how most people try to make it work. I found several examples like this one

Link: http://goo.gl/hpeVv1

Others say to not bother to translate it. Fine, but what if I need to write it in French and I don't care about the English translation? I want to know what it actually means.

I asked a co-worker to describe what he would think about when he sees that phrase. It's rather simple.

English: Hoping you receive it,

It's just the action of wishing somebody that you hope they have successfully received the communication. For the meaning, we can forget about bonne and souhaitant, those are just formality and sound nice in French.

Who uses it? From my small sampling of emails it seems consultants use it to speak to their clients about the results of their work, that company communication departments use it to send internal memos to the staff. You could also use it if, for example, you were at a conference and met somebody and you wanted to send them some material you discussed.

Why use it? First, there must be an attachment. Second, it is very polite. Also, from what I can see, it avoids the use of I or me in the communication which is useful when you are acting on behalf of a larger group and don't want it to be too personal.
Je vous en souhaite bonne réception - works if it is just you sending an attachment. I have over 60 emails of this type and the phrase always made perfect sense. It was just dropping the I and changing wish to wishing that gave me trouble above.

Hope that's useful as I didn't find it discussed elsewhere here.

Comments? Corrections? Have at it. I will update this post with any problems found.

-Jason

A nice reference that is well organized. Have a look if you ever need to write a letter:

Link: http://goo.gl/fNgnw6

Bonjour Jason! That is an incredibly useful comment you have posted above and I think we need to start cataloging some of these gems in the forums and making them more readily accessible to people. I remember I had exactly the same issue when learning English and the little formal phrases such as 'yours sincerely' and many others stumped me for ages. Keep up the good work! - Marie Claire

Bonjour Marie-Claire,

Thank you. You are right. I'm not even sure I know how to get a list of the posts I have made here in order to do a quick review and cleanup... Once the new forum is ready, maybe I will look and see...

Jason

When I studied business English, I learned that to end an e-mail with "Thank you" is presumptious.  I suspect the same would apply to ending with "Merci".

In English, I like to write, "I appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you."  If the e-mail is part of an ongoing conversation and the other person helped me the past, I might write something similar to, "Thank you for the help I've received; I look forward our furthering working together."  One phrase I wouldn't use at the end of the e-mail is "Yours sincerely."

As some of this may not translate into French as directly as we might think, I left it in English (I'm not yet that good with French to know all the nuances).  That said, I suspect one could use in French closings with similar meanings to the two examples I used.