A few weeks ago, I came across an early morning tweet from Kathleen linking to a post on the New York Times’ Gadgetwise blog that asks the world to “Stop the Signature-File Insanity.” In this post, Sam Grobart provided an example of a recent signature from an email he had received that was fifteen lines long and that included everything from title, address, email address, fax number, and an advertisement for an upcoming conference. As he rightly points out, some of this information is redundant: if someone is communicating with you by email, you probably don’t need to be reminded of what his email address is. And you very likely don’t need to know his address or fax number.
Grobart goes line by line through the signature to assess what information is necessary and what can be left out. He then takes the remaining six pieces of information and “add[s] a soupçon of design” to compress the information into two simple lines. The result is a clear and refreshingly short way to end an email.
Email is a necessary method of scholarly communication and something that ProfHacker has discussed on multiple occasions (see Natalie’s “From the Archives” post earlier this week that collected what we’ve said about email). The multiple affiliations and titles that we accrue make it difficult to sometimes get to the point. Having started a new job over the summer, I had recently grappled with this as I updated my own email signature. After some tooling around, I arrived at the following:
Brian Croxall, Ph.D. CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow Emerging Technologies Librarian Emory University w: www.briancroxall.net t: twitter.com/briancroxall
I was pretty happy with this. It had my title, my institutional affiliation, and the two places where I wanted people to find me online: my website and Twitter.
But once I read Grobart’s post, I found myself thinking that while seven lines is far better than fifteeen, two lines is far better than seven. Since my own design skills don’t even amount to a soupçon, I decided that I would adapt Grobart’s style to my own signature. All six pieces of information were important, but I could live without the extra spaces. The result is the following:
Brian Croxall, Ph.D. | Emory University | CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow Emerging Technologies Librarian | www.briancroxall.net | @briancroxall
It might not be all that original, but I like my new signature. And when combined with my text expansion software, it’s very easy to choose when and where I want to append it. That means that I don’t include even these two extra lines when they aren’t necessary. And if I feel like keeping both signatures at the ready, I can do so with that tool or by building custom signatures in Gmail.
We’ve all suffered through too-long closers to emails. Have you taken steps to shrink your signature? Can you share your signature with us? (Feel free to anonymize your information!)
[Lead image by Flickr user Kevin Copps / Creative Commons licensed]
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64 Responses to Shrinking Your Email Signature
briancroxall - November 4, 2010 at 11:23 am
I should probably mention that my new signature will look much less cool if everyone else uses it. But I suppose that’s what I get for writing this post…
kcfeminist - November 4, 2010 at 12:27 pm
One problem with not including your email address is that using Outlook on an Exchange server can mean that forwards don’t always include the email address, just the name of the sender. So if someone forwards me an email and I want to reply to the original sender, I won’t always be able to figure out the email address for the original sender. The same thing can happen on listservs. In fact, one listserv I’m on specifically requests that one always include the email address in the body of the message somewhere. It’s easy to forget to do so unless the address is in the signature.
dcullen - November 4, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I disagree. I often hunt through my emails to find someone’s signature when I need to call him or her. It’s often far easier than looking someone up. I am also a highly reluctant user of MS Outlook, which “helps” me by changing people’s email addresses to their names. That means if I need to send someone’s email address to someone else, I need to add it to a phone/email list I’m making, or for whatever reason I need the actual email address, I need to go to the person’s signature. If it’s there!
I agree that people often have way too much information. Phone number and email address, and maybe mailing address and fax, though, I think should always be included.
A bigger problem is when people have way too little information. I get messages from listservs sometimes on which all I can see as the “from” is the listserv, and the message is just signed with a first name. I don’t know know what institution the person is from sometimes!
dukemarketing - November 4, 2010 at 1:14 pm
As a university press publicist, I feel like it’s important that people be able to reach me in whatever way works best for them, so my email signature contains phone, street address, web, twitter, etc. I agree with dcullen that emails are often a way to store address information in a quickly searchable format.
I also encourage my authors to advertise their new books in their email signature. It seems like an easy, painless way to let all their contacts know they have a new book out. People can ignore it if they want.
profkb - November 4, 2010 at 3:58 pm
The longest part of my signature has nothing to do with me specifically — it is required for all faculty at my institution.
This message is from the Office of at and is intended only for the recipient to whom it is addressed. This message and attachments may contain confidential or privileged information (including FERPA-protected information) and are intended solely for the use of the recipient noted above. Please do not share or forward this e-mail without the permission of the sender. If you are not the proper addressee, please do not review, disclose, copy, distribute or use the contents of this message; please destroy the message immediately and notify me at 000-000-0000 or .
profkb - November 4, 2010 at 4:01 pm
OK.. I guess comments can’t have less-than or greater-than brackets in them. Let’s try it again. Sorry!
This message is from the Office of the Department of All Things at My University and is intended only for the recipient to whom it is addressed. This message and attachments may contain confidential or privileged information (including FERPA-protected information) and are intended solely for the use of the recipient noted above. Please do not share or forward this e-mail without the permission of the sender. If you are not the proper addressee, please do not review, disclose, copy, distribute or use the contents of this message; please destroy the message immediately and notify me at 000-000-0000 or myemailaddress@myuniversity.edu.
ranti - November 4, 2010 at 6:34 pm
My sig default is a 6 lines one containing my title, my complete work address, and my phone number. This is useful when I need to send a formal email to a vendor or other libraries. I could create a second sig file containing a shorter version and use it as the default and switch to the longer version when it’s needed.
higheredmike - November 5, 2010 at 7:24 am
I recently simplified my email signature because I realized that my former signature (with images hyperlinked to my institution’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Blog) was getting distorted and mangled when sent to some people who don’t have Outlook. That said, I simply changed my signature to a 7-line, text only version:
Name Here
Title Here
Institution Here
Address 1
Address 2
Phone number here
College website here
eszter - November 5, 2010 at 7:46 am
Brian, I completely agree that too many messages contain superfluous signature information. When you are exchanging several emails with a friend whose contact information (and affiliation) you know anyway, it is so silly to have ten lines of signature there with every response. This can lead to email threads with 7-8 lines of substance and 50-60 lines of repeated signature.
I have a five-line (six counting the blank line in between affiliation and URL) signature automatically come up in my GMail account with each new message. However, it takes exactly two keystrokes to delete this when I don’t need it (e.g., when replying to my students or colleagues). Shift-PgDn then Delete and it’s gone.
msehphdjd - November 5, 2010 at 8:46 am
Two thoughts…
1. I have the default (GroupWise) to ask whether or not to include the signature file. When it’s people who know me, I just don’t include it.
2. Get a dot tel account and list all your info there. Then, just put, e.g.
Jane Smith, Ph.D.
http://jsmith.tel
msehphdjd - November 5, 2010 at 8:47 am
Oops! Looks like there is really a jsmith dot tel. Well, you get the idea.
briancroxall - November 5, 2010 at 9:16 am
Thanks, all, for the comments thus far. We use Outlook / Entourage on a very extensive basis in our library, and I haven’t had too much trouble with email address being redacted. Of course, if you’re emailing someone on the same Exchange server, that’s not going to be a problem. And I’ll freely admit that my particular position doesn’t have me communicating with too many outside parties whom I don’t already know. That might make a difference in my choice of signature.
I can understand that it can be easier to find someone’s phone number by searching your email than hunting it down on the website. Making yourself available in whatever ways work best for those trying to reach you, as dukemarketing suggests, is certainly important. But I think it’s also worthwhile to think about how you want to be contacted. I don’t really want people to call my work phone. It’s just not a reliable way to reach me, and I don’t like my work flow being interrupted in that way. Of course, if I didn’t have two titles at the moment, it would be easy to replace one of those text blocks with my number.
I suppose the point of this post was more to get us to quickly reexamine our signatures and determine whether or not we individually feel that the information there is necessary or not. Keep what’s important; cut what isn’t!
@msehphdjd: Thanks for the suggestion of dot tel. That’s a service I wasn’t familiar with.
micahvandegrift - November 5, 2010 at 9:17 am
I kind of walk the line on this one. I do agree that titles and all the extra info can make the signature bloated, but it also depends what sort of face you want to put out. I was turned on to WiseStamp by Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb and have been loving it since. I can always turn it off and go with a simple “Micah Vandegrift – micahvandegrift.com” (which is my default), but what Wisestamp does is gives me the option to add my recent Tweet, blog post, delicious bookmark, etc. I think that can be useful when you want to show that you are involved and engaged in a field. This might be more of a boon for folks like myself, grad students about to enter the market, rather than employed professors or people already in their career. But still, for us digital citizens who put effort in to being “out there,” Wisestamp is a pretty cool way to show it off.
My sig ends up looking like this: http://flic.kr/p/8QY3gw
cowesses - November 5, 2010 at 9:39 am
I’ve just recently shortened my work email signature. I found myself becoming annoyed by emails with wordy and ornate signatures that include some pithy quote, especially those with a political or religious message.
So now my own signature follows this format:
Name
Office phone number
Name of college and campus
If they want to email me, they can hit the reply button.
uncnews - November 5, 2010 at 10:05 am
I simply replaced my fax number (can’t remember the last time someone asked me for it) with my Twitter “name.” Didn’t shorten anything but seems a little more modern and up to date.
lynnefox - November 5, 2010 at 10:49 am
I recently began including a Microsoft Tag with my signature. If the MS Tag or QR Code system catches on, some may be able to replace a signature with a small image?
mosaicone - November 5, 2010 at 11:19 am
It’s the images in some email signatures that drive me crazy. I work with colleagues in student recruitment who use Facebook and Twitter icons in their signatures. They show up as attachments and make it difficult to search for emails with attachments that I need to find again. And, as eszter posted earlier, extensive signatures are distracting on long threads, particularly when I’m left to decipher the conversation in order to address a problem.
Just as I don’t leave my business information in a personal voice mail message, I consider it professional courtesy to adjust what signature I use in my emails. I have an external signature for messages that go outside the university and a shorter signature that I use when establishing new relationships on campus. When dealing with established colleagues, I just sign my name.
scottpmuir - November 5, 2010 at 11:55 am
The real issue here is the limitations of Outlook. I worked with an email system that allowed the use of multiple signature formats and it automatically assigned them. If it was an email to a colleague in my department it could just have my name and my extension. If it was going to someone outside my university it could include complete contact information.
11272784 - November 5, 2010 at 1:08 pm
“This message is from the Office of at and is intended only for the recipient to whom it is addressed. This message and attachments may contain confidential or privileged information (including FERPA-protected information) and are intended solely for the use of the recipient noted above. Please do not share or forward this e-mail without the permission of the sender. If you are not the proper addressee, please do not review, disclose, copy, distribute or use the contents of this message; please destroy the message immediately and notify me at 000-000-0000 or .”
This is more evidence that if all lawyers were laid end to end, it would be a good thing. it is one of the ultimate examples of pure email blat and trash. No one reads it, no one pays attention.
matt_l - November 5, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Ok, gotcha.
adrianmurphy - November 5, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Like Jane Smith above, I find my signature (used on all my email addresses) which is – http://AdrianMurphy.tel – works perfectly, and is always up to date. Nothing else needed…
terrapin44 - November 6, 2010 at 10:29 am
As some others have said, I totally disagree with not including your e-mail address. Some e-mail clients hide it, if your e-mail gets forwarded or printed out it may be lost, etc. Why would you include your name if you are worried about redundancy? It’s in the from line? Same with institution, people can figure it out by the domain, etc. The point is to help people be able to contact you. An extra 25 characters for an e-mail address is not an issue for bandwidth, so why not include it since it will clearly help some people?
BTW: The idea of including a link to a web site with information isn’t useful to me. What if I don’t have internet connectivity (say while traveling and reading e-mail offline)?
BTW2: How many people are going to know what the twitter handle is? I’d much rather see the e-mail or phone number.
mbelvadi - November 7, 2010 at 10:00 am
I agree with terrapin44′s last comment – if I saw a signature that had that piece that said @username, I wouldn’t have known that was a twitter account, and would have assumed that it’s a broken email address, especially since you didn’t include an email address elsewhere in the sig. (Since when did the for-profit proprietary twitter service take over the meaning of the @ sign? Are we going to see a trademark application on it soon?)
tengrrl - November 7, 2010 at 3:14 pm
I wonder how we talk about sig blocks with students. The practices that we adopt are connected to our readers. Academic readers are different from those out in other fields however.
Today, I happened upon Do professional certifications belong in your e-mail signature? — building43 http://hoki.es/aE72KC
Generally the answer to the question is “no.” Still it’s a question that would make the basis for a keen classroom activity for professional writing classes. And it made me wonder about the feelings on all those sig blocks that point to things like Dr. so-and-so, J.L. Doe, PhD, and the varying “PhD Candidate.”