Should I say I will follow up

Only if you will. A promise to telephone next Tuesday that you do not keep is worse than no promise, and many employers ask in the posting not to be contacted directly. Read the posting before offering.

Which sign-off is safe

Anything conventional. In British correspondence, "Yours sincerely" follows a named greeting and "Yours faithfully" follows an unnamed one; "Kind regards" and "Sincerely" are both unremarkable and neither has ever cost anybody an interview.

Do I need to thank the reader

The National Careers Service's guidance for the closing is to "thank the employer for considering your application" and to give your contact details (nationalcareers.service.gov.uk). One sentence is enough.

What happens if I do not sign it

The draft still exports. The check step reports the signature line as unsigned, because a letter with no name on it is the one fault a reader cannot work around.

Should the closing repeat my strongest point

No. A reader who has just finished the proof paragraphs does not need them summarised four lines later. Close and stop.

Guide · Cover letter

How to end a cover letter, and what the last line should do

The closing is the least interesting paragraph in the letter and should stay that way. Two sentences, a sign-off and your name, and the argument is finished.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— a letter with no name on it is unfinished.

By the time a reader reaches the last paragraph they have already decided whether the letter was worth their time. The closing cannot change that verdict. What it can do is fail: by asking for too much, by restating the letter, or by leaving the reader without a name to reply to.

What the closing has to contain

An offer. One sentence saying you would be glad to talk about the work.
A thank you. The United Kingdom's National Careers Service gives this as the job of the closing: thank the employer for considering the application, and make sure your contact details are there (nationalcareers.service.gov.uk).
A sign-off and your name. Conventional, short, correctly spelled.

That is three short things and they fit in two sentences. Anything more is the letter refusing to end.

The sign-off question

British correspondence has a rule that is worth knowing and not worth agonising over: "Yours sincerely" after a named greeting, "Yours faithfully" after an unnamed one. Getting it the wrong way round is a small error that a small number of readers will notice. "Kind regards" avoids the question entirely and is unremarkable in every sector.

What matters more is that the greeting and the sign-off belong to the same letter. A letter that opens with a first name and closes with "Yours faithfully" has two registers in it, and the seam shows. The greeting page covers the front end of the same decision.

The signature, and why it is a rule here

The cover letter builder signs the letter from the name on your evidence, and the check step reports the signature explicitly before you export. A draft with no name on it is reported as unsigned. Nothing is blocked, because blocking an export over a name would be patronising, but the note is there because an unsigned letter is the one fault a reader cannot repair from context.

The same check reports a handful of other things it measured on the draft: whether the letter names the role and company, whether it carries a figure your evidence also states, whether every line is still traced to your evidence, and how many requirements in the posting your evidence cannot support. Each of those is a measurement on the bytes of your draft rather than an opinion about it.

Closings that cost you

The summary close, which restates the three proof paragraphs in one sentence, as though the reader had finished them and forgotten. The presumptive close, which says you look forward to discussing the role in the interview. The demanding close, which sets a deadline for a reply. And the apologetic close, which hopes the reader will excuse the intrusion, and spends its last sentence making the application smaller.

Each one is a habit rather than a decision. Deleting all four and replacing them with an offer and a thank you improves most letters by a visible amount.

Where the contact details go

At the top, in the header, where a reader looks for them. Repeating an email address in the closing is harmless and slightly anxious. What is worth checking is that the address in the letter matches the one on the résumé header, because two documents with two different addresses is a real problem rather than a stylistic one.

The follow-up sentence

Offering to follow up is fine when the posting does not forbid it and when you actually intend to. Many postings say plainly that they do not want direct contact, in which case the sentence is not assertive, it is an instruction ignored on the first page of the relationship. Reading the posting to the end catches this, and it catches the application instructions most people miss as well.

Then stop

Once the offer, the thank you and the name are on the page, the letter is finished. The reader's next action is to open the résumé, and the best thing the closing can do is get out of the way quickly enough that they do. If you are tempted to add one more paragraph, check first whether it belongs in the proof section instead, where the argument of the letter is actually made and where a reader expects to find it.

What to do with an unusual availability

One clause, in the closing, and only when it is genuinely unusual. A three-month notice period, a start date fixed by a visa, a period abroad already booked: each of these is worth a reader knowing early, because finding out at offer stage costs both sides a process.

A standard notice period is not news and does not need the line. Neither does a general statement of flexibility, which every applicant makes. The test is whether the fact would change how an employer sequences their hiring, and if it would, the closing is the right place for it and one sentence is the right length.

Close it and sign it

The closing and the signature are blocks 07 and 08 in the builder, and the check step reports an unsigned draft before you export.

Open the cover letter builder See the 12 letter designs

Questions

Should I say I will follow up: Only if you will. A promise to telephone next Tuesday that you do not keep is worse than no promise, and many employers ask in the posting not to be contacted directly. Read the posting before offering.
Which sign-off is safe: Anything conventional. In British correspondence, "Yours sincerely" follows a named greeting and "Yours faithfully" follows an unnamed one; "Kind regards" and "Sincerely" are both unremarkable and neither has ever cost anybody an interview.
Do I need to thank the reader: The National Careers Service's guidance for the closing is to "thank the employer for considering your application" and to give your contact details (nationalcareers.service.gov.uk). One sentence is enough.
What happens if I do not sign it: The draft still exports. The check step reports the signature line as unsigned, because a letter with no name on it is the one fault a reader cannot work around.
Should the closing repeat my strongest point: No. A reader who has just finished the proof paragraphs does not need them summarised four lines later. Close and stop.

Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.