How do you sign an email
From an actual conversation with my wife:
You received my, “We’ve chatted before and you’re cool with a nonprofessional signature” as opposed to my “You’re my wife and get the cutesy inside joke signature”. I also have the “This is strictly business so heres my salutation and full name signature.”
What’s your email signature?
Conversation
None actually, we are requred to put one on saying something about this email being confidential and yada, yada, yada. So to be different and buck the system I refuse to add one. I never was one to conform unless it was a technical stand but even then push it to the limits.
" r "
Simplicity, business or personal emails. Give the contact information if needed in the closing, which I think is a warmer invitation, and close. Though I will use my full name if it's someone I've never spoken with before.
I have a few. I don't like having more than what I need or else I'll start getting confused over which one to use during which occasion.
Actually, to be honest, I've always wanted to do mine as .js because, y'know, I program javascript files fairly often. but I just never got in the habit of it. :)
I have quite a few, but I've been told my best one is the picture of boobs I use for poker night communications.
Mine looks like this:
Word to your mother,
Jeff
Okay, it really doesn't. But it should.
If it's business, generally my full name first, then just my first name and after that just "F". Graceful degradation!
Funny you should mention this - I was thinking about it today!
I've got one business related contact who e-mails me with "Best regards"..."With my continued best regards" etc, etc about 10 times a day, it does my head in!
90% of the time I'm simply:
--
Cheers,
[full name]
P.S. you comment system rocks :)
Great topic, Jon. I generally just sign emails "- John" or "Best, John" but also keep a simple signature around for work-related stuff.
Nothing bugs me more than people that include their huge fucking email sig on every message. Especially when I already know their phone number, and fax number, and skype name, and email address, and blog address. Erg :-/
-for friends and such
With love for Him,
Wesley Walser
or
-for business
Thanks,
Wesley Walser
Your Most Trusted Web Design
http://www.yourmosttrusted.com
and now I feel like a spammer so you can remove that link if you want.
Usually it's: A.
Unless I'm trying to be formal. Then it's: Ara
Of course then there's the cutesy signature I send my wife, but you don't need to see that. ;-)
"With love for Him"
who tf is Him?
Good post Jon!
Thanks,
Chris.
[insert sig]
Judging by the capitalization, I'm guessing he's referring to Jesus. That's pretty well known among religious folk.
Personally, I just stick to:
Thanks,
Scott
...for most things
Great post Jon.
One of the joys of being self-employed is that I get to play with my job description. It's interesting to note how often people pick up on it. Right now, I'm the Creative Dictator. In the past I've been the Cheif Idea Farmer and Bottle Washer. I wonder what my next title should be...
My signature is automatic, otherwise I probably wouldn't have one. Mine is:
later,
- Michael
Push the envelope, watch it bend.
It's usually just "--Dave", but underneath that, a quote from Moby Dick.
--Dave
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
?Oh Time, Strength, Cash and Patience!?
In Mail.app I've set up a nice one:
> --
> Jonathan Holst, http://holst.biz
> "This fame thing - I don't get it"
> -- R.E.M. - E-Bow the Letter
But sometimes, I just use
> -Jonathan
Interesting topic :-).
I have never used and never will use a useless confidentiality notice. Nobody ever reads it and they sure won't do what it says. If you only wrote 2 lines, then your email message still looks big because of that absurd big confidentiality notice.
I find signatures with animated GIFS are very annoying. Even more annoying is, but that's not about signatures, if somebody sends a message to a whole lot of people and doesn't bcc it, but puts everything in the to or cc field, so that everyone can see your email address.
I use the following signature:
--
Anand Graves
http://www.anandgraves.com
From a personal email perspective, I find auto-appended signatures such as "Regards, Roger" annoying. They remove personality from an email (which is already personality-deficient). They're the equivalent of a rubber signature stamp. Think about how you sign off people; add personality and affection: "Ciao bella, Lucy xx" is so much more heart-warming than "--Dave".
In the world of corporate email, different rules apply. You NEED that phone number, that fax number WILL come in useful. Corporate salutations range from the formal ("Yours faithfully") to the kind ("Many thanks") to the odd ("Best regards") and capitalisation rules are abandoned ("Best Wishes"). Endless entertainment is created with fonts (Wingdings!) and colour. Now THAT is personality. Ahem.
As much as I dislike email disclaimers (primarily because they take up 90% of an email message and multiply, virus-like, over the course of an email thread), from a corporate viewpoint they are useful:
http://www.emaildisclaimers.com/
With best Regards,
--Dave
--------------------------------
The author accepts no liability for the validity of the content of this comment.
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My problem with the legalese at the bottom is that I haven't seen any court decisions that confirms that having an email disclaimer is worthwhile.
In particular, including a virus warning at the bottom seems unnecessary as most viruses send out mass emails with no disclaimers on them. Would you still be liable in that situation?
I got a series of different email accounts with different types of signatures. I got one for my new business venture, Blue Flavor, one for Digital Web Magazine, and one for... well, just me being me at NickFinck.com Add to the mix seperate emails for mailing lists which mix a few things from some of my signatures... well ya, I put some thought into this. :P
I have a formal one that I use on mail that comes to business addresses like info@ or feedback@ but my mail usually just gets signed - wdm -. Personal mail just with my given name.
I do remember the days of large multi-line signatures on usenet postings and how it was considered inconsiderate to have more than 4 lines about 40 characters wide due to bandwidth useage.
Personal goes along the lines of
-Koray
And business is
-Koray Ataman
CollateralFX, Co-Founder
http://cfx-host.biz
Both are rather informal, even the business one, but I've never been much for signatures.
--
Jens Meiert
Information Architect
http://meiert.com/
Usually just:
- f.
www.oolong.co.uk
...but I'll expand that f. to Fergus or Fergus Ray Murray depending on the degree of formality required.
Usually I use
It depends.
For coworkers and emails specifically related to my job:
Mr. Kim Siever
Website Development Office
Faculty of Management, University of Lethbridge
http://www.uleth.ca/man/
http://www.hotpepper.ca/ (Portfolio)
All others get:
Mr. Kim Siever
http://www.hotpepper.ca/
Some people think the Mr is to formal, but after more than thirty years, I've grown tired of people assuming I'm female.
Late to the party, but for work I have:
Bradley Wright
Web Developer
-------------------------------------
Company Name
+61 (0) 2 9xxx xxxx
www.example.com
account@example.com
-------------------------------------
and for personal I have:
Bradley Wright
intranation
-----------
e: account@example.com
w: http://www.example.com/
-----------
(There should be tab-stops in front of "e:" and "w:" - I send personal emails as plain-text.)
Professionally I use:
- Elliot Anderson
But for friends and family I just sign off with a simple:
e.