What to write, when the words matter.

How to pick the right one

Most people writing a card are stuck on the same thing, and it is not vocabulary. It is calibration: how warm is too warm for someone two desks away, how formal is too formal for a manager you actually like, how short can a message be before it reads as an afterthought. Every message here is filed against those three questions, so you can narrow by them instead of scrolling.

Start with the recipient, not the occasion

The occasion tells you the subject. The recipient tells you almost everything else. A note to someone who reports to you is read as an assessment whether you meant it that way or not, so it has to be specific about work rather than about feeling. A note upward is read for what it might be angling for, so it has to be short enough that it clearly is not. A note sideways, to someone you have shared a desk with for years, can carry the thing you would actually say out loud. Same news, three different notes — which is why 527 messages across10 occasions is not overkill.

Then pick a tone you can actually say out loud

Tone is where most card messages fail, and they fail in one direction: too warm for the relationship. If you would not say the sentence to the person in a corridor, it will read as performance on a card that gets passed around an office. The warm set here is for people you know; the short set is for people you like but do not know well, and it is not a lesser option — brevity from a near-stranger reads as respect, where effusiveness reads as awkward. The formal set is for a public record: an all-team email, a printed card, anything a person's manager will also read.

Match the length to the space

A group card with fourteen signatures gives you two lines. A leaving email gives you a paragraph. Every message shows its word count before you copy it, so you can pick one that fits the physical space rather than discovering halfway through writing it out that it does not. Filter by length on any occasion page to see only the ones that will fit.

Change it, and it still counts

Nothing here is meant to be sent untouched, though plenty of it can be. Swapping in the project you worked on together, or the thing they were known for, turns a good message into the one they keep. Copy the closest one, change the middle sentence, and it is yours. That is the whole intended use — no account, no credit, no permission needed.