At my most informal, I won’t sign anything. This is pretty rare though, usually just for short conversational replies in a long back-and-forth communication with someone I know well.
For the bulk of what I send, I just sign “-Nickname”. For more formal emails or initial communications, my sig ranges from “Nickname Lastname” to “Full Name” to “Thank you very much, Full Name”.
Usually use some kind of signature and some kind of greeting. That said, the greeting ranges from a “Dear …” type formal opening to a simple “Hey” or “Howdy” as the beginning of the first sentence. The signature ranges from my full name, rank, and unit (as appropriate) to just my first name, or, if I’m emailing my college friends, the initials of my nickname.
My mom signs emails with “JM”, which is both her initials and an acronym for “Just Me”, which is how she starts the titles most of her emails in the subject line. My dad, poking fun at her for this, in turn signs his emails with “JM2” for “Just Me Too”.
He’s kinda cool that way, considering that he’s a 60 year old professional businessman.
I don’t use an automated signature on my “real” email address, but on my “fun” email addresses, I usually have a signature with my nickname and some goofy quote (one of my favorites I’ve ever used was a line which was Latin for “The only good language is a dead language”)
ETA: Oh, and various places I checked a while back said there was no official ettiquite for email, and that the rule of thumb was that you would phrase it like a memo or a letter, depending on the importance of the email (though the equivilant of a quick hand-written note could of course be used if necessary).
I was told at some point in college that it was considered rude to email or phone someone when they were close enough for you to go over and talk to in person, but then again, it was also not at all strange for me to use AIM to talk to my room mate when we had a direct line-of-sight accross the hall with our doors open, so that depends largely on your crowd.
At work, I’ll email my underlings if it’s not something urgent – “whatever happened with such-and-such,” or “when you’ve got a minute, could you update the figures on the whatsis,” etc. – why interrupt them if I don’t need the answer right that second?
Depends. At work I have an auto sig. At home it is 50-50.
I have an auto-sig for work emails. For home ones, I usually sign them myself - I have a couple of email accounts, and a bunch of friends who know me by different nicknames so sometimes I have to sign it so they can be sure who it’s from!
Yeah, see, exact opposite of what I’d heard, where you don’t email/phone unless you can’t get away from your desk and it’s urgent. Probably depends entirely on the culture of your organization.
I almost always sign emails, because it’s a way of indicating that I’ve finished writing. I’ve received unsigned emails that I suspect are incomplete based on the content that make me wonder “Did you mean to hit the send button, or did you accidentally send me 1/2 of the email you intended to write?” It’s also handy when going back to older email exchanges – makes it much more clear who said what, especially if the issue is no longer fresh in my mind.
With emails from my mom, I think she just likes to write “love, mom” which I think is cute.
I sign, for two reasons:
it looks better, lay-out wise.
it is more clear where the text of the mail ends.
OP,
I’m a mom and I use every opportunity I have to say “I love you” to my children.
Also - some of use grew up when hand written letters were the norm, and signing a letter is automatic.
I don’t sign emails to everyone - just my children.
I don’t sign personal emails. I usually don’t bother with a greeting, either, unless maybe it’s just “Hey.” Work emails have an autosig with a mandatory boring legalese confidentiality and privacy thingy-whatsit.
I don’t sign personal emails with any kind of formality, although occasionally just stick my name on the end.
At work I sign all emails unless I’m in the middle or at the end of a conversation and just need a quick one-liner. The rest of the time I believe it can look terse or disinterested to write a work-related email with no signature or greeting. Having said that, I really don’t like auto-signatures; they can make a message feel just as impersonal.
I use a full signature (name, title and contact info for business; just name for personal) in the first e-mail of any “thread.” For any future e-mails, I just use “~Ben.” It helps keep confusion down in group conversations where multiple people are copying the entire group.
Nearly 100% of my work Emails are signed. Most of my personal Emails are also signed as are most of my posts here on the Dope.
This is just a habit I got into a long time ago, no real thought goes into it.
Jim
I don’t know if you really are the odd-ball, but you kinda are in my eyes.
I don’t think too much of it really, but I sign every post and every email. Even the ones on the school message board that have my name before the post can even be read.
Brendon
I actually had to check my sent box to know what I usually do. I always sign my formal letters or letters with clients with a complimentary close (usually “Regards”) and my name, and for informal emails to friends and family, I sign simply with a “p” and no complimentary close. But it appears that almost all my emails are signed. At least, the first couple dozen or so I checked.
I never, however, sign posts on a message board. To me, it seems odd.
I use an auto signature for work e-mails. Personal or informal ones I definitely don’t sign them. I don’t say “bye” at the end of phone calls either. I just hang up when we’re done. Its irritating when people get upset about this. We were done talking, I hung up the phone. My dad sometimes answers his cell phone “Okay” which I think is awesome. Most of the time if I’m calling someone when they pick up I dive right in to what i need to say. Cut the foreplay and post-play out of emails and phone calls!
Really? You just drop the conversation like that? I don’t know if I’d be upset, if I knew this to be your way of doing things, but I can’t think of anyone else I’ve spoken to on the phone that doesn’t use some word or sequence of words to communicate that the conversation is finished, like “bye” or “later” or “see ya” or whatnot. I can understand why people would get upset, because it’s not usual, in my opinion. I mean, I’m sure I’ve done it before, but as a matter of course, it would seem odd to me.
As I said, for me it is just a habit. I know some posters have said it feels politer to do so and I believe **Shodan ** jokingly has said he does it to disturb other posters. 
Jim
Just the name itself doesn’t look that weird to me. What does kind of jar me is the complete “Regards, John” sort of thing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I think of a message board more as a conversation/chat type thing that moves at a slower pace than correspondence.
For work, there is always an auto-sig, including full name and contact info. Even with my full name in my work email address AND at the bottom of my email, it’s amazing how often people misspell my first name when they start the email.
At home, my parents get a “talk to you later, love…”, most emails get nothing.
Ya gotta love spell check. My SO and I would sometimes end emails with “Love ya”. Well, once I missed the spell check and it turned into “Love yak”. That, of course, led to all the emails being signed “Love Yak” for a while, until I found a yak finger puppet and had it sent to his office.