{"id":2572,"date":"2009-05-20T17:36:03","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T21:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2009-05-21T08:52:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T12:52:13","slug":"the-etiquette-of-e-mail-signatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/05\/20\/the-etiquette-of-e-mail-signatures\/","title":{"rendered":"The Etiquette of E-Mail Signatures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the old days, your signature (or \u201c.sig\u201d) was a statement about who you are \u2013 and in some places (such as forums like Slashdot), it\u2019s still used for that purpose. (In a way, it\u2019s like having an electronic bumper sticker!)<\/p>\n

Recently though, I’ve been thinking about signatures, and whether or not they were still useful in the context of email \u2013 specifically in the context of business<\/strong> emails. I mean, really, when was the last time you actually found someone\u2019s email signature useful?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking, of course, about those huge, obnoxious, totally unnecessary email signatures that seem to be the norm nowadays. The ones that contain pictures, six different phone numbers, an email address (often a different one than the one in the email itself!), a picture, a long title & company name, colors, pictures, flashing lights\u2026 okay, maybe that last one was made up.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m much more old-school in my opinion of what a signature should be, mostly in the fact that I don\u2019t think an email signature should have any formatting at all \u2013 <\/strong>it should be plain text only. I also think that shorter is better<\/em>. I think 3-4 lines is about the max you\u2019d want \u2013 any longer than that and your signature starts being significantly larger than most of the emails you\u2019re sending!<\/p>\n

Really, all your email signature should be is:<\/p>\n