Unremitting salutation

Even though I am all in favor of salutations and complimentary closes, when exchanging more than a couple of mails with the same person, I feel that starting yet another reply with Dear Mr. Smith gets somewhat worn and moreover stiff, even awkward if you like.

Hence, I was wondering whether it would be considered ill-mannered to drop the salutation after the first (second, third?) mail and jump to addressing the actual subject matter directly.

Correspondingly, if I drop the salutation, should/can I omit the valediction as well?

Solution 1:

I often leave off the "Dear" in such circumstances:

Mr Smith:
In regards to our previous conversation...

Moreover, if Mr. Smith has signed one of his emails to me in a manner such as this:

Best regards,

Jeff

Jeff Smith
President, EL&U Inc.

Then I might take that as a cue, and I may take the liberty of beginning subsequent emails thusly:

Jeff,
Thanks for getting back to me...

Solution 2:

In real paper-in-envelope correspondence I'd keep to the formal letter structure.

But in email, which is less formal, and between quick exchanges in a continuing dialogue I will typically go to just the person's name and a comma as an opening and sometimes if the conversation contiues long enough I drop even that and just start typing. Similarly, you can reduce the closing to simply your a dash and your name or no close at all if the conversation is well established and all pretense of formality has worn off.

It really depends on the level of formality you believe the situation requires.