Short Birthday Wishes for Coworkers

This is the default register for the occasion, not the fallback. A birthday card at work is a shared surface — it goes desk to desk, twelve people sign it, and the space you take is space somebody else does not get. Two lines placed considerately are better manners than four lines of warmth, and everyone who signs after you knows the difference.

Everything here is under 25 words and finished at that length. They are also written for the two formats that dominate this occasion: the card corner, and the team channel post where forty people will read it and nobody will reply.

Short is the right call in one more case that has nothing to do with space. If you like this person but genuinely do not know them — different floor, occasional project, a name you recognise from a rota — brevity is the honest register. A near-stranger writing something specific reads as strange; a near-stranger writing something brief and warm reads as thoughtful.

Where to go longer: someone you actually work with, on a card that is yours alone. The heartfelt set has room to say the thing you have been meaning to say all year.