I don’t bother signing informal emails. The recipient knows who sent it already, and email seems much less official than a real letter, of course I sign those.
My mother and I might keep replying back and forth on a single email for 2 days, maybe 6 or 8 volleys between us. Yet she feels the need to sign “Love, Mom” each time. I wish she felt like using spellcheck, but that’s another issue. Why bother signing in a case like that?
If I email my boyfriend at work telling him to please stop for milk on the way home, I don’t sign it either. He invariably replies with a silly affectionate type of signature.
Depends on the situation, but I’m just a likely not to sign as to sign. My work email has a professional sig, so I often sign off casually to soften the email. To my husband, I write something sweet, because it’s nice and it makes him smile .
Casual ones I don’t sign at all and despite the fact that most people at work have automatically generated sigs with all their details - name, job title, contact numbers, physical location, email address, star sign, sexual preferences etc; I just sign mine with my first name - the rest of my name is in my email address. I figure if I am emailing them something they know who I am.
Sometimes I don’t, especially if the email is coming in a long string of back and forth replies. Most of the time I do, and sign according to who I’m writing to. Most of the time my SO will get the first letter of my name, other people might get my nick. It depends on person and mood, but yes, I usually stick some form of my name on there.
I do, but just with a simple “j” at the end for personal emails. I don’t know why I do this…
I use “MyName, MyCompany Support” when I’m answering a company email. Usually those emails are sent from company-shared accounts (like info@mycompany.com) and it makes it easier to follow the thread later on if we need to.
I’m not a huge fan of auto-sigs, just because my business partner’s is very long. Makes it feel impersonal when he sends me a note.
I don’t like using auto-signatures, because they end up at the bottom of a quoted section, or worse at the end of a multi-quoted back-and-forth collection.
So I sign my first name at the end of my message, so you know where my new stuff ends, and the history of quotes begin.
I don’t use auto signatures either. Most of the time, I sign off with my name, even for brief one or two sentence messages. Most of the folks I communicate with do the same. Just habit, I guess.
My casual observation is that it seems to have to do with the formality of the communication. If an email is the electronic equivalent of a letter, I do sign it. I recently sent a series of emails to people I do not know on the subject of their expertise. I set up the email like a formal letter and signed it as one. I also recently sent a series of email to my family and friends, and these emails were more equivalent to a telephone conversation so i did not sign them. (I do not actually think about this at the time).
For work, I use an autosig that has my full name, title, and company info. I still usually sign just as I would a letter: usually some variations of “thank you” and my name depending on the formality of the letter. (i.e. “Thank you very much, Tremor Violet”, “thanks, Tremor”, etc.)
Private correspondance is “see ya, tremor” out of habit (or often, “see yam tremor” if I don’t catch it).
Almost always. Personal email auto sig is currently “Hugs – D”, non-personal is “Sincerely, <f/l name>” and business is “Thank you, <Ms f/l name, title, Og-awful long boring legal notice, three phone numbers, three addresses, two fax numbers, disclaimer, bosses email address>”. I hate the business auto sig, and rarely even look at the signature on any incoming email, personal or not.
I occasionally remember to delete the “Hugs – D” bit for non-family personal emails, but not very often.
I almost always sign my emails. The only real exception is when I am writing to a student and I am at a loss to know how. I can’t say Hari. I am not about to say Prof. Seldon (sounds to stuffy). I often say
–HS
and the rest of the time leave it blank.
The other awkward time is when I write to my family mailing list. My kids call me Pops, my grandkids, Pop-pop and others Hari. Sometimes I sign it
We had a related thread a while back with one poster who felt it was a sign of pretension to sign your name at the end of a post. I simply do it out of habit as posting online, or via email, is so close to writing a letter. I always sign my letters so I sign my emails and messages on bulletin boards.
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