Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/04/16/silly_email_signatures_come_under/

Silly email signatures come under fire

Well, we don’t like them anyway

By Tim Richardson

Posted in On-Prem, 16th April 1999 12:34 GMT

Companies are being urged to crack down on the use of puerile and meaningless signatures at the end of emails. Not only does the practice use up valuable bandwidth it can also damage the reputation of companies as their employees attempt to create some kind of alter ego in the personality-free world of email. This signature from one London-based PR company is typical of the problem. "We don’t have a mission statement, just some favourite words: creativity, credibility, curry, dedication, detail, empathy, experience, flexibility, fun, goodwill, humility, inspiration, integrity, motivation, obsession, optimism, pace, pants, personality, positive, professionalism, progress, sausages, synergy, technical know-how, value and work-rate." Good grief. Surreal expressions are equally as popular -- but just as sad -- as this example shows. "The tire (sic) is only flat on the bottom." (There's a prize for anyone who knows what this means, cos we ain't got a clue - Ed). The advice from experts is to include just your name, company and contact details at the end of emails and leave the humour to the experts. So, what do you think? Are funny, surreal or weird signatures a problem? Or are they something to be welcomed to help brighten-up an otherwise dull day? If you have a favourite signature you'd like to share with our readers why not post them on The Register Forum so we can all have a laugh. ®