You say goodbye and I say hello

I’ve been meaning to write a few posts for a while now, but never could find the time. It really takes special effort to clean your thoughts and then put them in order.  However, the following story just fell into my mailbox.  It tells you how to save time by skipping on the greetings/salutations.  I am removing all math matters and leaving it undedited otherwise.  To protect the anonymity of my correspondent, I will call him “Kiran” throughout the email exhange.  Enjoy!  — IP

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(1) [Math] Thanks! — Kiran

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(2) Dear Kiran,
[Math] Best, — Igor

P.S. In the future, please address me as “Igor”, which is my first
name. It’s best to begin your email with customary “Dear Igor”.
Thank you.

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(3) I’ve been writing emails for 25 years, so I’m not about to start taking advice on how to start them; but if you start a thread to me with “Dear Kiran”, I can be safely counted on to respond in kind for the *first* email in the thread. If it happens enough times, I might even remember to initiate same way. For instance, this is what happens when I exchange emails with Serre; but neither of us uses the salutation on replies after the first within a thread.

[Math] Best, — Kiran

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(4) Dear Kiran,
[Math] Best, — Igor

P.S. With all due respect, I am going to continue using salutations
and expecting the same in every email irrespectively on the person or
the count in the thread. Neither the “25 years” nor argumentum ad
verecundiam seem convincing — I have been using email for just as
long and in similar circumstances. The 8 letters of “Dear Igor” is
really not too much to ask.

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(5) Thanks, I think this last reference does exactly what I was looking for!

Best, — Kiran

P.S. I have something more to say on the subject of salutations, but since that is a low-priority discussion for me, I will have to put it off until I am more current on my email.

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(6) “Dear” Igor,

I promised one more piece of information regarding salutations, so here goes. (Don’t bother replying to this email; I promise to delete the response without reading it!)

I recently had some email exchanges with Shinichi Mochizuki, and was a bit surprised by the fact that despite the fact that I met him more than 20 years ago, he began his email with “Dear Professor [redacted]” (and persisted with this in subsequent replies within the thread). However, when I asked about this, he made it clear that on one hand, he has a policy of using the same format of salutation no matter the recipient (to avoid having to worry about the level of formality, figuring it is safe to err on the side of being too formal sometimes), he has absolutely no expectations about how anyone will address his in response.

My point is that you misuse a certain term here and it’s not the gratituous Latinate rhetorical terminology; it’s the word “respect”. It is a fact that reasonable people can draw different conclusions about such matters as how it is appropriate to start an email. You are free to choose how you address me, but how I choose to structure my correspondence is my decision alone. What you think is “not too much to ask” is for me to keep you in mind as a special case when I don’t even have very much correspondence with you anyway; that’s a waste of mental real estate that I can little afford.

— Kiran