We numerically investigate by the finite-difference time-domain method the effects of surface termination on directional emission exiting a photonic crystal waveguide. The directed power and far-field beam profile for the original proposal [E. Moreno et al., Phys. Rev. B 69, 121402 (2004)] and its enhancement [S. K. Morrison et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 081110 (2005)] are computed for different values of some important parameters. We find another surface termination condition with a positive surface displacement in the structure of the original proposal which has a negative surface displacement. Our surface termination is more effective than the original structure, and nearly as effective as the termination for the enhancement, for directional emission. Besides, our termination is simpler than that for the enhancement. We confirm the effectiveness of directional emission from our termination in its far-field beam profile, radiation intensity distribution, and additionally the wave-vector space representation by the Fourier analysis.