{"id":26543,"date":"2007-06-06T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/06\/06\/email-tip-lay-off-the-massive-email-signatures\/"},"modified":"2007-06-06T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-06T10:00:00","slug":"email-tip-lay-off-the-massive-email-signatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070606-00\/?p=26543","title":{"rendered":"Email tip: Lay off the massive email signatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All too often I see email like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p>  <b>From<\/b>: X <\/p>\n<p> Is there a way to turn off Q? <\/p>\n<p> <font color=\"#000080\"> <\/p>\n<p> Thanks, <\/p>\n<p> X<br \/> <b><i>Support Professional<\/i><\/b><br \/> Microsoft Product Support Services<br \/> Tel: +123 456 7890 Extension 1234 <\/p>\n<p> Email: <u style=\"color: #0000FF\">X@microsoft.com<\/u> <\/p>\n<p> In case I am unavailable and you need urgent assistance, you can contact the following people: <\/p>\n<p> My Backup: Y, Phone: +123 456 7890 Extension 1235 or Email: <u style=\"color: #0000FF\">Y@microsoft.com<\/u> <\/p>\n<p> My Manager: Z, Phone: +123 456 7890 Extension 1236 or Email: <u style=\"color: #0000FF\">Z@microsoft.com<\/u> <\/p>\n<p> <b style=\"color: #FF0000\">Note<\/b>: If you are a customer of Microsoft, Please refer to the terms and conditions which cover the provision of support and consulting services to you\/your organization. If you are not a corresponding in the course of, or in connection with a Microsoft contract or program with its own terms and conditions, Please note that no liability is accepted by Microsoft for the contents of this email.  <\/p>\n<p> <\/font> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Not only is your email signature is longer than your message, it&#8217;s also more colorful and makes greater use of boldface, so the reader&#8217;s eye is going to be attracted to the signature and miss your question entirely. (This is actually a rather subdued version. I&#8217;ve seen much worse, with animated images in the signature.)\n Don&#8217;t let your message get lost in the medium. The email signature should not draw attention away from your message. What&#8217;s more, it shouldn&#8217;t convey information that the reader doesn&#8217;t need to know. First of all, we already know your name and email address since it&#8217;s in the message header. And since this message was sent internally, we can easily look up your job title, division, telephone number, and manager&#8217;s name, and the huge disclaimer at the bottom is completely unnecessary since the message is internal and wasn&#8217;t sent to any of your support customers.\n The only information in the signature that we didn&#8217;t already know (or couldn&#8217;t already find out) is your backup, and I suspect this question could have gotten by without even that.\n <b>Sidebar<\/b><\/p>\n<p> Some time ago, I had a hobby of collecting hideous email signatures and organized nearly 200 of them into an online &#8220;email signature museum&#8221;. If things get slow, I could trot those out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All too often I see email like this: From: X Is there a way to turn off Q? Thanks, X Support Professional Microsoft Product Support Services Tel: +123 456 7890 Extension 1234 Email: X@microsoft.com In case I am unavailable and you need urgent assistance, you can contact the following people: My Backup: Y, Phone: +123 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,103],"class_list":["post-26543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-email","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>All too often I see email like this: From: X Is there a way to turn off Q? Thanks, X Support Professional Microsoft Product Support Services Tel: +123 456 7890 Extension 1234 Email: X@microsoft.com In case I am unavailable and you need urgent assistance, you can contact the following people: My Backup: Y, Phone: +123 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}