No, let’s not make up obscure possibilities, if you please. 99% of the business letters I have read come from a single person, with a single signature. For those, which account for the majority of business letters, your rationale does not apply. If you want to make sure you don’t sign the wrong letter, read the header (why would you need the name typed a second time?) or better yet, don’t sign your letters at all. And why would a client be checking signatures? Let’s stop visualizing remote possibilities. For a very large majority of business letters, there’s a single signer and no one receiving it is subjecting it to handwriting analysis.
So, for a letter with a single signature–please confine your answer to this–do you still apply the same reasoning as you do for posts? After all, every name after the one on the header is superfluous.
Well, I’m sorry, but I still see how it could be necessary:
“You sent me a letter saying that you would have it solved by Wednesday.”
“I never sent such letter!”
“Yes you did! Look! Here it is, signed by you! Here, under your name!”
That’s a remote possibility? Sure, but important enough that we still sign letters today and signatures are still functional. You disagree? Well, don’t sign anything ever again! But as long as I still see it as a necessary convention, I’m intellectually unable to consider it an error.
Yet, weirdly, there is a tradition hundreds of years old of including signoffs in communication. It’s a wonder Western civilzation has endured.
“But wait!” you, or someone else, will soon say. “A message board is not like a letter! Well, it’s very much like a letter, I mean, it’s written communication, a complete thought ending in a distinct conclusion, more like a letter than a conversation, and expecting a later, similary composed reply…but it’s not entirely like a letter! There is a small difference!”
And then into that small difference, pour rage and scorn.
It might be worth noting that, at least for some people I’m sure, that just putting your name at the bottom of a post might not constitute the same thing that irriatates them as does those that have longer sign-offs. I know in Sailboat’s case back when s/he did that, it never even registered. So perhaps the issue doesn’t lie so much there.
Ah, I see. Presumably, you ask because you’re unfamiliar with other living arrangements. It might surprise you to know the vast majority of adults such as I don’t live with their parents, in a basement or otherwise. Perhaps some day you’ll join us.
I’m still trying to figure out what you mean by the name being in the header on a business letter. Where’s the name? On the letterhead, perhaps? Isn’t that relatively uncommon in the business world?
I used to do clerical in a variety of settings and have transcribed a fair amount of letters for business people in different fields and, in the vast majority of cases, the letterhead contains the name of business and contact information. The letter writer’s name is in the signature block at the bottom of the page. At the top of the page is the recipient’s name and address block along with a salutation. At most, the letter writer’s name would show up twice on the page, both in the signature block (one handwritten signature and one typed name and title).
Can you clarify what you mean?
Also, you might want to consider that legally-speaking, a signed letter is much better evidence that so-and-so ‘said’ this than an unsigned letter.
Since the current policy is to allow such signoffs, and some people don’t care if they piss off people with their signoffs, it seems to me that the only way to fix this is for everyone who is annoyed by these to start using an inane/annoying signoff.
If there are enough people involved in this effort (particularly some prolific posters), all the threads in all the forums will be filled with inane/annoying signoffs, and, I assume, at some point, the PTB will ban them.
Who’s with me?
Δεν μπορώ να σκεφθώ μιαν ευφυή προσυπογραφή
Polerius
And rightfully so. People who adopt a mannerism they find irritating, with the express goal of irritating others, deserve to be banned. Particularly if they do so prolifically.
I think that about sums up the discussion/dick waving.
Ah fuck, I was going to talk about how well laid out the messages are here and how easy they are to read because we uphold a standard of posting that eases communication. Having deviations from that communication that do not relay any information, or, at least, relay redundant information repeatedly, really takes away from the subjects at hand.
He’s the guy wearing the propeller hat to be “different.” At the end of the day, it just tells people more about you than you are probably comfortable with.
Or, to quote my english teacher, don’t tell me how different and distinct you are, show me. He’s telling more with that signature than all of his posts combined.
I do think at this point, he is doing it to be jerkish. Invoking Ed doesn’t help change the impression.
