Occasion HandbookThank you 12 examples

Thank You Notes for a Friend

The hardest one to write, because with a close friend anything formal sounds wrong. Say it the way you would say it out loud.

For something specific

  1. 1 Thank you for driving four hours to sit in my kitchen and say nothing useful. It was exactly right.
    Tone WarmLength Short
  2. 2 Thank you for the week you took off work. I have not forgotten and I am not going to.
    Tone WarmLength Short
  3. 3 Thank you for the loan, and for not mentioning it since.
    Tone PlainLength Very short
  4. 4 Thank you for answering at two in the morning.
    Tone WarmLength Very short

For the friendship itself

Rare, awkward and worth doing once. Almost nobody ever receives one of these.

  1. 5 Twenty years. Thank you for all of it, including the parts where I was hard work.
    Tone WarmLength Short
  2. 6 You are the person I ring first. I do not think I have ever said that out loud.
    Tone WarmLength Short
  3. 7 Thank you for staying. A lot of people did not and you did.
    Tone WarmLength Very short
  4. 8 I am not good at this sort of thing, so: thank you, for everything, for a very long time.
    Tone WarmLength Short

Short, for a text or a card

  1. 9 Thank you. You are a good one.
    Tone PlainLength Very short
  2. 10 Genuinely, thank you.
    Tone WarmLength Very short
  3. 11 Thank you for last week. I owe you.
    Tone PlainLength Very short
  4. 12 Thanks. I do not deserve you.
    Tone WarmLength Very short

Questions people actually ask

How do you thank a friend for being there?

Name the specific thing they did and say it in your normal voice. Formal thank-you language between close friends reads as distance, which is the opposite of the point.